Events

Cornell’s collection of historical keyboard instruments ranges from the eighteenth century to the present day, includes both original instruments and modern copies, and draws musicians and scholars from around the world for performances, teaching, and study. Each semester’s series of events explores keyboard culture in all its variety while taking the instruments themselves as a central focus, from early nineteenth-century pianos made by Graf and Pleyel in Paris and Vienna respectively to Sage Chapel’s Aeolian-Skinner organ (Boston, 1940) and from the resonant Blüthner aliquot-strung grand piano (Leipzig, 1878) to the analog Minimoog synthesizer (Trumansburg, 1970). Events this Fall semester include full-length recitals on organs and pianos, midweek musical breaks at the campus organs, and intimate music-making in the domestic and social setting of Friday evening Salons at the A. D. White House.

Highlights include recitals by acclaimed fortepianists Stefania Neonato (November 13), CCHK Artistic Consultant Andrew Willis (October 22), and, leading things off, CCHK Postdoctoral Artist-in-Residence Patricia García Gil (September 10). Patricia will also be the concerto soloist for the visit of the Smithsonian Academy Orchestra, conducted by Kenneth Slowik, which will present a program of Haydn and Beethoven on October 10. There will be music and conversation centered on Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto (September 13), keyboard pedagogy at the turn of the nineteenth century (November 15), and student research on the CCHK collection (December 13) at the Friday evening Salons, and the usual midweek recitals of Midday Music for Organ alongside evening recitals by Balint Karosi and Annette Richards. The CCHK will also present “Chao Yuen-Ren’s Art of Songs” (November 1-2), a concert-symposium-exhibit that explores the musical legacy of the pioneering Chinese American polymath and Cornell alumnus (class of 1914). 

You’ll find the full schedule of the semester’s events, free and open to all, below. Please join us!

Co-sponsored by the Society for the Humanities, The Salon Project brings together music, instruments, research, and conversation in a compact, hour-length format at the historic A. D. White House on select Fridays at 5pm.

September 13: “The Opening Piano Solo of the Beethoven 4th Piano Concerto: A Short Talk on a (perhaps) Long Subject.” Followed by Works of Schubert, Beethoven, Chopin, and Mendelssohn, featuring Malcolm Bilson.

November 15: "Steps to Perfection: Piano Teaching from Clementi to Chopin" featuring CCHK Postdoctoral Artist-in-Residence Patricia García Gil and CCHK Artistic Consultant Andrew Willis.

Inspired by the mutual enrichment that arises from the interaction between teachers and students, Patricia Garcia Gil and Andrew Willis will host a conversation around the English/French lineage of piano instruction that stemmed from Clementi’s seminal Introduction to the Art of Playing the Piano Forte (1801), performing examples drawn from collections of studies by Clementi, Cramer, Montgeroult, and Chopin. The pedagogical materials developed by Clementi provided a model for countless instructional methods and were endorsed and used in their own teaching by Beethoven, Chopin, and other eminent musicians. Performed on piano by Joseph Simon, Vienna, 1835. 

December 13: “Historical Keyboarding in Action” featuring Cornell University faculty Ariana Kim (violin) and students from Roger Moseley’s research seminar.

September 10, 7:30pm (Barnes Hall). Patricia García Gil. Fortepiano. “Spanish Serenades and Chopinian Charms”

Alongside countless others, nineteenth-century Spanish composers were captivated by Chopin’s enchanting style. This program proposes a musical journey of intertwined souls and stories. We will traverse Spain’s vibrant landscapes through melancholic memoirs and luminous melodies written by Ocón, Aldalid, Viardot, and Pedrell, and embrace Chopin’s poetic voice through four of his most representative works. The program features two original pianos from the collection at the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards: the 1823 Graf and the 1843 Pleyel. 

September 20, 7:30pm (Anabel Taylor). Balint Karosi. Organ. “The Eclectic Baroque Organ”

A program of major works including Weckmann, “Es Ist das Heil,” Ligeti, “Hungarian Rock,” Danksagmüller, “Circuli,” and J. S. Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 582.  

October 22, 7:30pm (Barnes Hall). Andrew Willis. Fortepiano.

The CCHK’s Artistic Consultant Andrew Willis presents a recital featuring music of J. S. Bach, Haydn and Chopin.

November 13, 7:30pm (Barnes Hall). Stefania Neonato. Fortepiano.

Acclaimed Italian fortepianist Stefania Neonato presents a recital featuring preludes by Charles Alkan and Claude Debussy.

December 6, 7:30pm (Sage Chapel). Annette Richards. Organ. “La Nativité du Seigneur.” 

A complete performance of Olivier Messiaen’s monumental cycle, composed in 1935, of nine meditations on the Christmas story. 

October 10, 7:30pm (Barnes Hall). Smithsonian Academy Orchestra

Kenneth Slowik brings the SAO to Cornell for a program of Haydn’s “Oxford” Symphony, Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony, and Haydn’s Piano Concerto in G Major, featuring the CCHK’s Postdoctoral Artist-in-Residence Patricia García Gil.

November 1-2:

The Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards presents “Chao Yuen-Ren’s Art of Songs,” a concert-symposium-exhibit that explores the musical legacy of the pioneering Chinese-American polymath and Cornell alumnus (class of 1914). Through performances, scholarly discussions, and an online exhibition, this two-day event celebrates Chao’s groundbreaking contributions to modern Chinese art music.

Central to the event is Chao’s innovative “Chinese lieder” (1922-1927), a song collection that represents a bold experiment in merging Chinese and Western musical traditions and a creative use of music as a vehicle for reforming the Chinese language.

Friday evening’s concert (November 1, 7:30pm, Barnes Hall) will bring Chao’s experimental compositions to life, alongside works by his compatriot contemporaries—Chinese composers who were also studying in the U.S. at the time—and select European lieder that inspired him.

A Saturday morning symposium (November 2, 10am-12pm, Lincoln Hall B20) will assemble an interdisciplinary panel to examine Chao’s music within the broader contexts of early 20th-century Chinese-American intellectual life, East-West musical exchange, and the keyboard’s role in the global transmission of musical knowledge and creativity.

An accompanying online exhibition will invite visitors to explore a curated selection of photographs, letters, and musical works from Chao Yuen-Ren’s extensive archives at both Cornell University and UC Berkeley. These archival materials will illuminate Chao’s lifelong commitment to and fascination with music—as a scholar and musician, and as an influential Chinese-American intellectual on both sides of the Pacific.

The event, led by the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards, is co-sponsored by the Cornell Council for the Arts, East Asia Program, Einaudi Center, Society for the Humanities, and the Departments of Asian Studies, Music, and Science and Technology Studies, with additional support from the Cornell Office of Alumni Affairs.

Midday Music for Organ offers informal 40-minute programs on alternate Wednesdays at 12:30pm, giving busy Cornellians and guests musical respite at the center of the week. Events take place across campus.

September 11 (Sage Chapel) Annette Richards and David Yearsley. “Fantasies, Toccatas and Capriccios.” 17th-century music by Frescobaldi and contemporaries on the mean-tone Neapolitan organ. 

An excursion into the fantasy-filled world of Baroque Europe, including the virtuosic counterpoint of Roman virtuoso Girolamo Frescobaldi, the Italianate fantasies of North German organist Dieterich Buxtehude, David Yearsley’s own variations in 17th-century style, and, to open this semester’s series, the famous four-hand testaments to a musical friendship by Thomas Tomkins and Nicholas Carleton. 

September 25 (Anabel Taylor) David Yearsley. “The World-Famous Organist, J. S. Bach.”  

David Yearsley presents monuments of the organ art, with the music of J. S. Bach. The program includes the Prelude and Fugue in E-flat Major (BWV 552), Sonata no. 2 in C Minor, (BWV 526), and one of the most moving of all Bach’s chorale settings, “O Mensch bewein dein Sünde groß” (BWV 622).

October 9  (Anabel Taylor) Annette Richards. “Ancient and Modern, c. 1773.” Music by Stanley, Praetorius, and C. P. E. Bach.

Following in the footsteps of the English music historian Dr. Charles Burney as he traversed Europe in the early 1770s gathering information for his groundbreaking History of Music, Annette Richards takes listeners to mid 18th-century London, Berlin, Dresden and Hamburg, to explore music both historical and recent, ‘ancient and modern’ to use the language of Burney and his musical friends. 

October 23 (Sage Chapel) Guest. Ivan Bosnar. “The Organist Improviser.” 

Original improvisations and repertoire originally created in performance at the instrument, presented by prize-winning improviser and organist from Croatia, Ivan Bosnar.

November 6 (St Luke Lutheran Church). Jeffrey Snedeker. “The French Connection.” Includes music by Lefébure-Wély, Franck and Dubois. 

A recital on the beautiful Cavaillé-Coll style instrument, built by Juget-Sinclair, (Opus 45, 2015-16) presenting the sounds of the French Romantic organ as listeners and players might have experienced them around the turn of the 20th century. With music by Lefébure-Wély, Franck and Dubois, as well as an incursion later into the 20th century, the program offers a snapshot of the extraordinary repertoire created in France for the organs of Cavaillé-Coll and his successors.

November 20 (Anabel Taylor Chapel) David Yearsley. “Samuel Scheidt’s Tabulatura Nova at 400.” 

Celebrating the revolutionary and encyclopedic survey of techniques of organ composition, published in three volumes in Halle in 1624, that constitutes one of the most important publications of keyboard music before the 18th century.

December 4 (Sage Chapel) The Cornell Organists: Music for Advent and Christmas. Includes music by J. S. Bach, Messiaen, and others, with David Yearsley, Annette Richards, and friends.

The Cornell organists bring the semester’s lunchtime recitals to a conclusion on both the Italian organ and the Aeolian-Skinner, with seasonal music from three centuries and including David Yearsley’s improvised Toccata on O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.

Navigate to these pages to explore what the CCHK offered in the past semesters and themed series: