Concert with acclaimed pianist Robert Taub.
The grand piano stands alone – lid open, the keyboard a gleaming row of sharks’ teeth. Slowly, deliberately, the pianist approaches, sits down and focuses concentration. Then with fingers flying, sonorous strings are brought to life, sounds swirling through the air… we enter the vivid, imaginative, even visionary, sometimes haunted realm of passionate piano music.
Romantic Piano brings together expressive, intimate, passionate and exciting music. In this special programme of works by three composer/pianists, Dr Robert Taub starts with the stormy Pathétique Sonata of Beethoven, a proto-Romantic work that was an immediate hit: it sold out of its first printing almost immediately. Next is a set of highly personalised musical characterisations of an imaginary society by Schumann, his Davidsbündlertänze, with vivid musical symbolism of his yearning for his beloved Clara. The concert concludes with the thundering sonorities of Chopin’s mighty Sonata in B minor, the final of his three sonatas, composed five years before he died at age 39. Each work on this programme is deeply involving and expressive; the programme as a whole is a journey into the gripping soul of Romanticism.
This inaugural Musica Viva concert in Levinsky Hall promises an uplifting evening for all!
Date: Sat 15 Oct 2022
Time: 19:00 – 21:30 (Pre-concert talk 19:00. Performance 19:30)
Venue: Levinsky Hall, Roland Levinsky Building
Ticket information: standard £12 / concessions £10 / free for all students
illustration: Madison Wright
