Conference Schedule

 

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.

Tuesday, August 5

4-6pm    |    Registration

 

7:30-9:30pm    |    Evening Concert

Cellist David Hardy and fortepianist Lambert Orkis will play intimate works by Brahms and Schumann. They will be followed by Karim Sulayman (tenor) and Yi-heng Yang (fortepiano), who will perform an expressive set of Schubert Lieder.

Featured instruments: Joseph Simon, 1835,  John Broadwood & Sons, 1865

 

Wednesday, August 6

8:30-11am     |     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: Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony

Joyce Lindorff — Beethoven’s Powers of Improvisation and the “Eroica” Variations

 

1:15-2:15pm    |    Lectures

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

Rod Regier — Evolution of an Idiomatic Performance Technique

 

2:15-3:15pm    |    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 how piano design, construction, and materials co-evolved with composition and performance

 

3:30-5:00pm    |    Panel    |    Preserving a Legacy for Today and Tomorrow: Collections

Lectures and roundtable with Ken Walkup and Ken Eschete

 

5:00-6:00pm    |    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.

 

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

Bart Houtgraaf — 1792 Broadwood and 1830 Tischner

Michael Reiter — J B Streicher, one technician’s adventure into the world of early pianos

 

3:15-3:45pm    |    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 plays 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

Patricia García Gil, Rebecca Cypess, Yi-heng Yang

 

6:30-8:00pm    |    Reception 

 

8:00-9:30pm    |    Lectures    |    Technicians’ hands-on maintenance session

Led by Ken Walkup.


 

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

 

1:00-2:00pm    |    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

 

2:00-2:30pm    |    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.

 

2:30-4:00pm    |    Panel    |    Understanding Beethoven’s Grande Fugue for Four Hands, Op. 134: Entangling Bodies, Strings, and Subjects

Panelists: Elaine Sisman, Robin Wallace, Tom Beghin

Other participants: Luca Montebugnoli, Anastasios Zafeiropoulos, Blake Proehl

 

4:15-5:30pm    |    Recital    |    Album Leaves and Dedications

Matthew Bengtson, Gabriel Merrill-Steskal, Roger Moseley

 

7:30-9:30pm    |    Evening Concert

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

9:30-10:00am    |    Recital

Anthony Bonamici and Baron Fenwick — Schubert Variations in A-flat Major for fortepiano four hands, D. 813 (1824)

 

10:00-11:00am    |    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

 

11:15-12:00pm    |    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

 

3:15-4:00pm    |    Lecture    |    Malcolm Bilson

Malcolm Bilson on Interpreting Dotted Rhythms

 

4:00-4:30pm    |    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.

 

4:30-5:30pm    |    Mozart’s Pantomime: Commedia dell’ Arte and Improvisation

Lectures by Roger Moseley, Patricia García Gil, Robi Arce-Martinez.

Other participants: Federico Ercoli, Addi Liu, Eve Miller

 

7:30-9:30pm    |    Evening Concert

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 Yi-heng 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 — To Pedal or not to Pedal? Examining the Synonymity of “Soft Pedals” and Quiet Dynamics in Schubert’s Piano Sonatas

 

11:15-1:00pm     |    Panel    |    The Future of Fortepiano Culture

Discussion with audience and professionals.

 

Top