A new performance series launched in fall 2025 at the Johnson Museum of Art, centered on CCHK’s remarkable 1865 Broadwood grand piano now in residence. Slightly shorter than a modern concert grand, this instrument retains the expressive nuance, tonal richness, and dynamic power that defined the Romantic-era sound world.
Built in London at the height of 19th-century British piano craftsmanship, the Broadwood’s resonant voice will animate a series of interdisciplinary events exploring the intersections of historical sound, visual culture, and contemporary interpretation.
This initiative is the result of a collaboration of Andrew C. Weislogel, Seymour R. Askin, Jr. ’47 Curator, Earlier European and American Art, and Patricia García Gil (Postdoctoral Associate & Artist in Residence) and is co-sponsored by the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards and the Johnson Museum of Art.
All events were free and open to the public.
Fall 2025 Piano Series
Friday, September 12
Piano Series: Nature and Landscape
With the Johnson Museum’s salon-style wall of 19th-century American landscapes as both inspiration and backdrop, Federico Ercoli (graduate fellow at the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards) presents a program of piano works by Robert Schumann, John Cage, and Franz Liszt, exploring themes of nature and the sublime. The performance will be on the museum’s 1865 Broadwood grand piano. Jakub Koguciuk, Lynch Postdoctoral Associate for Curricular Engagement, will offer reflections and connections between the music and surrounding artworks.
Friday, October 3
Piano Series: An Evening at the Goethe House
In conjunction with the exhibition Margarethe Geibel: The Goethe House Series, travel back in time to 1830s Weimar and the eclectic home of German literary giant Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832).
Andrew Weislogel, Seymour R. Askin, Jr. ’47 Curator, Earlier European and American Art, introduces the program, which combines a visual exploration of Goethe’s residence and collections, as seen through Geibel’s unique print series. Patricia Garcia Gil, Roger Moseley, and Jean Bernard Cerin perform selections of German Romantic music from the era, including songs set to Goethe’s poetry and piano works by Clara Wieck, who, as a young prodigy, performed for Goethe on the very type of piano depicted in Geibel’s prints. An instrument of this same kind, provided by the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards, is featured in the performance—evoking the soundscape that once filled Goethe’s Weimar home. The piano used in this concert is a Graf replica by Rod Regier. Click here to watch the recording.
Friday, November 14
Piano Series: Louise Farrenc
This performance offers a musical and visual journey into the world of Louise Farrenc (1804-1875), a composer, pianist, and teacher who made great contributions to pedagogy, performance, and gender equality in 19th-century France. The program will combine performances of her solo piano works with presentations of original artworks from the period that illuminate her cultural world.
Jakub Koguciuk, Lynch Postdoctoral Associate for Curricular Engagement at the Johnson Museum, will guide the program, featuring performances by Vera H.P. Hsu, Andrew Zhou, Ariel Mo, Emma Zhuang, Huiping Cai, and Patricia García Gil. This event is part of the symposium Louise Farrenc at 150: Performance, Pedagogy, and Gender Equality in Historical Perspective.
Cosponsored by the Central New York Humanities Corridor, the Cornell Council for the Arts, and the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards, this free event is open to all.
Click here to see the video summary of the symposium “Louise Farrenc at 150: Performance, Pedagogy, and Gender Equality in Historical Perspective.”
Friday, December 5
Piano Series: Student Compositions
Along with its role as a home for the visual arts, how might the Johnson Museum’s unique I.M. Pei building inspire musical compositions? Join us for this special opportunity to hear keyboard performances by student composers, inspired by the building’s architecture, light, and environment—as well as the sound of an original 1865 Broadwood piano from the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards—as a point of departure. Doctor of Music Arts - Composition students James Parker, Michael Li, Seare Ahmad Farhat, and Maria Alejandra Bulla Clavijo will perform in the Hirsch Lecture Lobby located next to the Morgan Japanese Garden.
Spring 2026 Piano Series
Friday, March 13
Piano Series: Beyond the Parlor—Women Shaping American Musical Life, 1860–1930.
In the decades when the U.S. classical concert canon was taking shape, women were among its most decisive builders: cultivating ambitious piano culture in private collections, organizing and funding concert life through music clubs, and stepping from the salon into the public recital stage. This program draws on the musical repertoire and visual art of Gilded Age America, moving through a world of travel, study, and exchange across the U.S., Latin America, and Europe.
Presenters: PhD students Benjamin Skoronski and Ziqing (Emma) Zhuang, Postdoctoral Associates Patricia Garcia Gil and Jakub Koguciuk.
Tuesday, April 7
Piano Series: New Student Music for the Museum
Join us for this opportunity to hear premieres of new music by Doctor of Music Arts Composition student composers Eliot Burk, Jasmine Morris, and Coral Douglas, inspired by the Museum’s spring slate of temporary exhibitions, including Naples: Course of Empire, The Hum of Life: A Thousand and One Tales from Bali, and A Life of Collecting: Gifts of Native American Art from Malcolm Whyte ’55 and Karen Whyte. These new compositions will be performed on an original London 1865 Broadwood piano from the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards’ collection, with the expanded participation of various other musicians. Click here to see the recording.
Friday, April 24
Piano Series: Piano Portraits—Art and Music-Making in London ca. 1800
This program, incorporating a scholars’ study day and a public lecture/concert, is designed to raise questions about the many intersections between materials and practices of artists and piano-builders in Britain at the turn of the nineteenth century. Pairing a newly-acquired portrait pastel depicting known women musicians by Anna Tonelli (ca. 1763–1846) with a square piano of the exact type depicted in the drawing, we will gather paper conservators, curators, art historians, pianists, music scholars, and piano restorers for a discussion around the milieus of art and music making at the time. Questions of materials and their histories, and the methods, aesthetics, and ethics of art and instrument conservation, use, and display will inform a public lecture/concert including performances of repertoire either composed or typically performed by women, on the Center’s 1799 London Broadwood fortepiano.
Speakers and performers are scheduled to include: Soyeon Choi, Head Paper Conservator, Yale Center for British Art, Thomas Strange, Chief Curator and Artistic Director, Sigal Music Museum, Laurence Libin, Emeritus Curator of Musical Instruments, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Roger Moseley, Director of Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards and Milstein Program in Technology and Humanity, Cornell University, Andrew C. Weislogel, Acting Chief Curator and the Seymour R. Askin, Jr. ’47 Curator, Earlier European and American Art, and Patricia Garcia Gíl, Postdoctoral Associate and Artist in Residence, Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards. Click here to see the recording.