Drawing on Cornell’s renowned collection of historical pianos, we will enjoy a richly varied program of panels, lectures, lecture-recitals, concerts, and more! All events take place in the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts.
Registration is required for all events except evening concerts, which are open to the public. For a list of these events, visit the Public Concerts page.
Registration is open! Register Now to attend.
Tuesday, August 5
4-6pm | Registration
7:30-9:30pm | Evening Concert
Karim Sulayman (tenor) and Yiheng Yang (fortepiano), will perform an expressive set of Schubert Lieder. They will be followed by cellist David Hardy and fortepianist Lambert Orkis, who will play intimate works by Brahms and Schumann.
Featured instruments: Joseph Simon, 1835, John Broadwood & Sons, 1865
Wednesday, August 6
8:45-11am | Panel | Approaching Historical Keyboards Through Chopin
Dylan Henderson — ‘Finding the Moonlight’: In Search of Chopin’s ‘Silver’ Sound
Cezary Karwowski — Rediscovering Chopin: A Refreshed Polish Perspective on Performance and Pedagogy Through Historical Pianos
Shin Hwang — Fryderyk Chopin according to Raoul Pugno
Myung-Jin Oh — The Cultivation of Touch and the Personified Voice of Chopin’s Pleyel of 1848, No. 14810
Robin Morace — Etudes by Hélène de Montgeroult (1764-1836) and Maria Szymanowska (1789-1831)
11:15-12:15pm | Lecture-recitals | Beethoven Arranged and Improvised
Luca Montebugnoli — Investigating and Reviving the Early Nineteenth-Century Practice of Piano Arrangement: Haydn's "Die Vorstellung des Chaos" and Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony
Joyce Lindorff — Beethoven’s Powers of Improvisation and the “Eroica” Variations
1:15-2pm | Lecture-recital
Federico Ercoli — Responsibility of and for an "action". The many lives of a Broadwood piano and the role of "its" artists between Dussek and Bilson
2:05-3:05pm | Lectures
Ken Eschete — Core Principles of Conservation: An Illustrated Guide
Ken Walkup — Conservation Ethics in the Real World
3:10-4:10pm | Lectures
Tom Strange — American History Reflected at the Keyboard: a survey of instruments in the Sigal Music Museum that framed America’s historical legacy
Anne Acker — Making the Music: A Look at the Interrelationships of Piano Design, Music Composition and Performance
4:15-5:05pm | Lecture & Roundtable | Preserving a Legacy for Today and Tomorrow: Collections
Rod Regier — From Inside the Instrument: Performance Hints
Roundtable with Ken Walkup and Ken Eschete
5:15-6:15pm | Tea and Conversation
Informal sessions featuring lightning talks aimed at the general public, in which speakers present to a rotation of small audience groups for 10 minutes plus 5 minutes for discussion.
Speakers: Thomas Strange, Joyce Lindorff, Federico Ercoli and Anastasia Chin
7:30-9:30pm | Evening Concert
Former students of Malcolm Bilson, including David Breitman, Petra Somlai, and Tuija Hakkila, will perform music by Schubert, Robert Schumann, and other composers.
Featured instruments: piano after Johann Schantz ca.1800
Thursday, August 7
9:00-10:45am | Lectures
Mark Kroll — How to Tune Your Piano, and Other Useful Instructions. Johann Nepomuk: Hummel’s Piano Method and Nineteenth-Century Performance Practice
Janet Pollack — Cramer/Byrd Manuscripts: A Matter of Restoration, Conservation or Profit?
Maria Rose — “A work unique in its genre…” Hélène de Montgeroult and piano pedagogy
11:00-11:40pm | Recital | Evolving Keyboard Soundscapes of the Galant Era
Anastasia Chin and Curtis Pavey, fortepiano and harpsichord
11:50-12:30pm | Recital | East and West Europe Meet at the Music Salon of the Razoumovsky Family
Liubov Titarenko, fortepiano
1:30-3:00pm | Lectures | Case Studies in Restoration and Conservation
Stephen Birkett — ‘Nourishment for the soul’ or ‘a feast for the ear’? A comparative study of Stein and Walter fortepiano actions
Bart Houtgraaf — 1792 Broadwood and 1830 Tischner
Michael Reiter — J B Streicher, one technician’s adventure into the world of early pianos
3:05-3:35pm | Recital | Songs and Contradances at Home: The Music Of Ignatius Sancho and Henri Capron
Jean Bernard Cerin (baritone), Patricia García Gil (fortepiano), Eve Miller (cello)
3:45-4:45pm | Recitals
Anthony Bonamici performs Sonata in A minor, op. 1, by John Knowles Paine
Artis Wodehouse — Crossing Boundaries: 19th C. New Orleanian Composers Basile Barès (1845-1902) and Eugene Wythe Baylor (1833-1918) and a modern reimagining of Abraham Lincoln’s favorite song Listen to the Mockingbird
5:00-6:30pm | The Salon: An Incubator for Untold Stories of Keyboard Culture
An interactive exploration of gender, class and agency through 18th-century music, literature, visual art, and games featuring Patricia García Gil, Rebecca Cypess, and Yiheng Yang
6:30-8:00pm | Reception
8:00-9:30pm | Lectures | Technicians’ hands-on maintenance session
Led by Ken Walkup, Anne Acker, Ken Eschete, Rod Regier, Michael Reiter, and Thomas Strange
Friday, August 8
9:00-10:00am | Lectures | Teaching Historical Keyboards as a Stimulus to Creative Performance
Audrey Axinn — Teaching Classical Ornamentation to Students
David Breitman — The Fortepiano as a Pedagogical Tool for (Modern) Piano Players
10:15-11:30am | Panel | Teaching Historical Keyboards as a Stimulus to Creative Performance
Panelists: Tuija Hakkila and David Szilasi, Petra Somlai and Aruth Masrangsan, Matthew Bengtson and Cezary Karwowski
12:30-1:30pm | Lecture-recitals
Anders Muskens — A prominent figure within the Mannheim School: Georg Joseph Vogler (1749-1814)
Anastasios-Achillefs Zafeiropoulos — “A hint of keyboard magic”: The “Effect” of Fingerings in Clementi’s Revisions of his op. 36 Progressive Sonatinas
1:45-2:15pm | Tea and Conversation
Informal sessions featuring lightning talks aimed at the general public, in which speakers present to a rotation of small audience groups for 10 minutes plus 5 minutes for discussion.
Speakers: Eve Miller and Hester Bell Jordan
2:30-4:00pm | Panel | Understanding Beethoven’s Grande Fugue for Four Hands, Op. 134: Entangling Bodies, Strings, and Subjects
Tom Beghin (chair), Elaine Sisman, and Robin Wallace
with Luca Montebugnoli, Anastasios Zafeiropoulos, Blake Proehl
4:15-5:45pm | Recital | Album Leaves and Dedications
Pieces composed for friends, occasions, and instruments across three centuries, performed by Matthew Bengtson, Gabriel Merrill-Steskal, Roger Moseley (with Aisslinn Nosky, violin)
7:30-9:30pm | Evening Concert: Musical Dialogues from Brillon de Jouy to Beethoven
Sylvia Berry and Ursula Dütschler will present a selection of music for fortepiano and harpsichord by Jean-François Tapray (1738-1822), Anne Louise Brillon de Jouy (1744-1824), and Armand-Louis Couperin (1727-1789), after which Duo CPE (consisting of Andréa Walker, soprano, and Mikhail Grazhdanov, fortepiano) will perform songs and arias by Haydn. Tom Beghin and Luca Montebugnoli will conclude proceedings with a rendition of Beethoven’s rarely-heard four-hand fortepiano arrangement of his Grande Fugue for string quartet.
Featured instruments: piano after Gottfried Silbermann, 1749, Joseph Simon, 1835, piano after Johann Schantz ca.1800
Saturday, August 9
10:00-10:30am | Recital
Anthony Bonamici and Baron Fenwick — Schubert Variations in A-flat Major for fortepiano four hands, D. 813 (1824)
10:30-11:30am | Lecture | Neal Zaslaw
Neal Zaslaw — Piano-forte pour la parfaite harmonie, or, how many notes are there in an octave? The Harmony – Fortepiano of Johann Jakob Könnicke, Vienna, 1796
11:45-12:30pm | Lecture | Pablo Gómez Ábalos
Pablo Gómez Ábalos — The Clavecin roïal and the Aesthetics of Timbres
1:30-2:30pm | Panel | Preserving a Legacy for Today and Tomorrow: International Zoom Panel
Kerstin Schwartz — The importance of organological research for restoration, conservation and building replicas.
Catalina Vicens — Curating Sound: Performance, Conservation, and Collection in Dialogue
2:30-3:00pm | Lecture-recital
Blake Proehl — CPE Bach, the Friederici clavichord, and the Classical clavichord idiom
3:05-3:50pm | Lecture | Malcolm Bilson
Malcolm Bilson on Interpreting Dotted Rhythms
3:55-4:25pm | Tea and Conversation
Informal sessions featuring lightning talks aimed at the general public, in which speakers present to a rotation of small audience groups for 10 minutes plus 5 minutes for discussion.
Speakers: Federico Ercoli and Hester Bell Jordan
4:30-5:45pm | Reimagining Mozart's Pantomime
A musical reconstruction of the night in 1783 when Mozart and friends donned the masks of the commedia dell'arte, directed by Robi Arce-Martinez
Other participants: Federico Ercoli, Patricia García Gil, Addi Liu, Eve Miller & Roger Moseley
7:30-9:30pm | Evening Concert: Women at the Keyboard
An evening of powerful and lyrical chamber works by Jane Mary Guest (c.1762-1836), Emilie Mayer (1812-1883), and Louise Farrenc (1804-1875), performed by Yiheng Yang, Aisslinn Nosky, Gesa Kordes, Stephanie Vial, Heather Miller Lardin, and Andrew Willis.
Featured instruments: John Broadwood & Sons, 1799, Pleyel et Cie,1843
Sunday, August 10
10:00-11:00am | Lecture-recitals
Lin Lao — Rediscovering Franz Behr or is he Charles Godard or G. Bachmann…?
Charlotte Tang — Beyond Softness: Unlocking the Expressive Power of Soft-pedals in Schubert's Piano Sonatas
11:15-1:00pm | Panel | The Future of Fortepiano Culture
Discussion with audience and professionals.