Yale in New York Series Continues With Prokofiev Rediscovered 2/9

On Tuesday, February 9 at 7:30 p.m., the Yale School of Music continues its third annual Yale in New York series with Prokofiev Rediscovered. Boris Berman, the acclaimed pianist, Prokofiev specialist, and chairman of the Yale piano department, performs with gifted alumni, students, and faculty of the Yale School of Music in a program that features three premieres by one of the titans of 20th-century music.

Sergei Prokofiev was a prolific composer who wrote music in many genres. His piano sonatas are essential 20th-century keyboard repertoire, his concertos and symphonies are cornerstones for soloists and orchestras, and his operas and ballets continue to find their way onto the stages of the great companies. Prokofiev's fable Peter and the Wolf and Alexander Nevsky cantata are even familiar outside the music world. Yet for all this, there are still Prokofiev works that await discovery.

The Zankel Hall concert will showcase three recently discovered Prokofiev works: a fragment from the opera Distant Seas (1948) receives its world premiere, while Music for Athletic Exercises (1939) and the complete music from the ballet Trapeze (1924) will be heard in New York for the first time. In addition, Boris Berman will be joined by the dean of the Yale School of Music Robert Blocker in a rarely heard two-piano arrangement of a suite of Schubert waltzes.

Music for Athletic Exercises will be performed with choreography by the New York City Ballet's Adam Hendrickson. The New York Times has raved that Mr. Hendrickson "is just about invincible: understated, enigmatic and full of eccentricity. Mr. Hendrickson is unparalleled in City Ballet's canon of character parts."

The Yale School of Music is ideally suited to present music on the Prokofiev Rediscovered program. The program was created by Boris Berman, chairman of the Yale piano department and one of the world's most significant Prokofiev specialists. Berman is the founder of the Prokofiev Society of America, the first pianist to record all of the composer's solo works (Chandos), and the author of Prokofiev's Piano Sonatas: A Guide for the Listener and the Performer (Yale University Press).

Yale in New York is the acclaimed series in which distinguished faculty-many of them famous soloists-share the limelight with exceptional alumni and students on Carnegie's stages, capturing the intense collaboration found on every level at the Yale School of Music. This past September showcased the classical legacy of Benny Goodman; upcoming concerts feature the undiscovered Prokofiev, Penderecki conducting Penderecki, and great voices from the famed Oral History of American Music project. The series is curated by David Shifrin.

Performers:

Music for Athletic Exercises (1939)
Boris Berman, piano
Dancers from The Hendrickson Dance Project (Elysia Dawn Fridkin, Matt Renko, Robert Colby Damon)

Fragment from the opera Distant Seas (1948)
Elisabeth de Trejo, soprano ('10 MM)
Baritone TBA
Dann Coakwell, tenor ('11 MM [ISM])
Rolando Sanz, ('02 MM, '03 AD)
Boris Berman, piano

Music for the ballet Trapeze (1924)
Stephen Taylor, oboe (Yale faculty)
Emil Khudyev, clarinet ('11 MM)
Marc Daniel van Biemen, violin ('10 MM)
Ettore Causa, viola (Yale faculty)
Aleksy Klyushnik, double bass ('11 MM)

Schubert waltzes transcribed for two pianos (1923)
Robert Blocker and Boris Berman, pianos (Yale faculty)

UPCOMING YALE IN NEW YORK CONCERTS

Apr. 8: Voices of American Music:
A Tribute to the Oral History of American Music Project at Yale (Zankel Hall)

Apr. 30: Penderecki Conducts Penderecki (Stern Auditorium)

For tickets, call 212/247-7800 or visit www.carnegiehall.org

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