Remembering Charles Rosen - An Evening of Music and (A Few) Words Set for Wednesday, October 16 at 6:30 p.m.

The late pianist and author Charles Rosen will be celebrated in an evening of classical music and remarks on Wednesday, October 16 at 6:30 p.m. at Baisley Powell Elebash Hall at The Graduate Center of CUNY. The event is free and open to the public, but seats are limited and reservations are required. To reserve a seat, please contact Shuman Associates at shumanpr@gmail.com by Wednesday, October 9.

Pianist Jeremy Denk and tenor Nicholas Phan will perform Beethoven's An die Ferne Geliebte, cellist Fred Sherry will play Babbitt's More Melismata, and they will be joined by violinist Rolf Schulte for works by Mozart, Brahms, Carter, and Schumann. Remarks will be made by Richard Kramer, Distinguished Professor of Music at the CUNY Graduate Center; Robert Silvers, Editor at The New York Review of Books; and Henri Zerner, Professor of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University. The event is sponsored by the Ph.D. and D.M.A. Programs in Music and the Barry Brook Center.

The event also marks the acquisition by The Graduate Center of Mr. Rosen's extensive music library of some 800 items. Of special interest are the annotated scores of piano works by Pierre Boulez and Igor Stravinsky, which Mr. Rosen performed in collaboration with the composers, and numerous works by Elliott Carter, with whom Mr. Rosen enjoyed a long and productive relationship.

The breadth of Charles Rosen's endeavors reflected a remarkable synthesis of performing musician, scholar, writer, and lecturer. First and foremost, however, he remained one of the most widely respected pianists of his time, internationally acclaimed for his performances and recordings of a diverse repertoire ranging from Bach to works by today's most important composers. Mr. Rosen's unique combination of musical sensitivity and powerful intelligence produced interpretations of exceptional understanding and impact in concerts and recitals here and abroad. Named Musical America's 2008 Instrumentalist of the Year, Mr. Rosen was particularly well known for his interpretations of Beethoven and the Romantic repertoire, especially the works of Chopin, Schumann, and Liszt. A native New Yorker, Mr. Rosen inherited the great Romantic piano tradition in a direct line from some of its most illustrious proponents, namely Moriz Rosenthal, a pupil of Liszt, and his wife Hedwig Kanner, a pupil of Theodor Leschetizky.

Mr. Rosen was also renowned as a writer of extraordinary perception in the fields of music, art, literature, and intellectual history. Among his most celebrated books are The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, whichwon the National Book Award for Arts and Letters and has been translated into seven languages, and The Romantic Generation: Music 1827-1850, an expanded version of the six Norton Lectures he gave at Harvard University, which was published with an accompanying CD by Harvard University Press in 1995. His book Music and Sentiment was published by Yale University Press in June 2010.