St. Mary’s College of Maryland Musician-in-Residence Brian Ganz and piano faculty member Beverly Babcock will present a concert on Tuesday, May 9 at noon in the Auerbach Auditorium of St. Mary’s Hall on the College campus. The program will feature Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466. Ms. Babcock will play the orchestra part on a second piano. This concert is free and open to the public. For more information call (240) 895-4498.
“Mozart’s Piano Concerto in D minor, K. 466, is one of his greatest,” Mr. Ganz said recently. “It is full of grace and elegance of course, being Mozart, but also displays a powerful depth of feeling and even a sense of tragedy. I adore all of Mozart’s works, but his works in the minor mode strike me as even more beautiful and profound than his works in major, and this work is a good example of that. Beethoven loved this concerto and performed it, and in fact wrote two great cadenzas for it, which I will play. So listeners get to hear both Mozart and Beethoven within the same work!”
Ganz recently performed his 7th recital at the Strathmore Music Center in North Bethesda in his decade long journey through the complete works of Chopin, a project he has undertaken in partnership with the National Philharmonic. He began his “Extreme Chopin” quest at Strathmore in a sold out recital that launched the ambitious endeavor to perform the composer’s approximately 250 works. After a recent recital the Washington Post praised the “ravishing sensual beauty of Ganz’s sound” and the “elegance of his delivery.”
Ganz has appeared as soloist with such orchestras as the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the National Philharmonic, the Baltimore and the National Symphonies, the City of London Sinfonia, and L’Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo. He has performed in many of the world’s major concert halls and has played under the baton of such conductors as Leonard Slatkin, Mstislav Rostropovich, Pinchas Zukerman, Jerzy Semkow and Yoel Levi. A critic for La Libre Belgique wrote of Ganz’s work: “We don’t have the words to speak of this fabulous musician who lives music with a generous urgency and brings his public into a state of intense joy.” Beverly Babcock is the Accompanist-in-Residence at the College and a member of the piano faculty. She maintains a thriving concert schedule throughout the Washington, D.C. metro area.
St. Mary’s College of Maryland, designated the Maryland state honors college in 1992, is ranked one of the best public liberal arts schools in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Approximately 1,700 students attend the college, nestled on the St. Mary’s River in Southern Maryland.