St. Mary’s College of Maryland Musician-in-Residence Brian Ganz and fellow music department faculty member Beverly Babcock will continue their popular noon concert series on Tuesday, October 16 in the Auerbach Auditorium of St. Mary’s Hall on the college campus. They will offer a discussion and performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466. The program is free and open to the public. For more information call (240) 895-4498 or visit http://www.smcm.edu/events/organizer/music-department/.
“Mozart’s 20th concerto is one of his most dramatic and beautiful works,” said pianist Ganz. “It was so beloved by some of the great composers since Mozart that they were moved to compose cadenzas for it, since Mozart himself did not,” he continued. “Both Beethoven and Brahms composed cadenzas, for example. I’ll be playing Beethoven’s cadenzas. And listeners will probably recognize the lush second movement, as it was featured in the popular film Amadeus.”
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, one of the Washington, D. C. area’s leading accompanists, is the college’s Accompanist-in-Residence and a member of the piano faculty.
