Malcolm Bilson To Perform At Institute For Advanced Study

Malcolm Bilson, fortepiano, will perform November 20 and 22 at 8:00 p.m. and November 24 at 4:00 p.m. in Wolfensohn Hall on the campus of the Institute for Advanced Study. He will play works by Beethoven and Schubert on a specially built copy of an 1816 fortepiano. The concert is sponsored by the Institute’s Artist-in-Residence Program.

Malcolm Bilson has been at the forefront of the period instrument movement since the early 1970s. One of the world’s most respected interpreters of music of the late 18th and 19th centuries, Bilson will offer a program of works by Beethoven and Schubert played on his Nannette Streicher fortepiano, a copy built by Thomas and Barbara Wolf in 1998. The program will include Beethoven’s Sonata in E-flat Major, Opus 7 (1796), and Seven Bagatelles, Opus 33 (1802), and Schubert’s Sonata in F-sharp Minor, D. 571 (1817) and the Impromptu in F Minor, Opus 142/1, D. 935 (1828).

In addition to giving performances and lectures worldwide, Bilson directs the 18th-Century Historical Keyboard Performance Practice program at Cornell University, where he holds the Frederick J. Whiton Chair of Music.

Bilson’s numerous recordings include the three most important complete cycles of works for piano by Mozart: the Piano Concertos, with John Eliot Gardiner and the English Baroque Soloists, recorded on Deutsche Grammophon/Archive; the solo Piano Sonatas on Hungarton Classics; the Piano Violin Sonatas, with Sergiu Luca, on Nonesuch; and the complete sonatas of Franz Schubert on Hungarton Classics.

According to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "Bilson’s stylish and imaginative performances take the idiomatic capabilities of the fortepiano as their starting point," often revealing new ways of approaching the music.

Bilson will also give a lecture, "Do We Know How To Read Urtext Editions, And What, If Anything, Do Instruments Have To Do With It?" on November 21 at 4:30 p.m. in Wolfensohn Hall.

For further information, call (609) 734-8389, or e-mail air@ias.edu.