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Pianist
Edward Auer to Perform Classics by Chopin, Beethoven & Schubert in
Special Friday Concert
Classical works by Beethoven, Chopin and Schubert will
be performed by award-winning pianist Edward Auer of Bloomington, Ind.,
during a special concert Friday at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology’s
Hatfield Hall.
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| Award-winning pianist Edward Auer will
perform classical works by Beethoven, Chopin and Schubert during
a special concert Friday at Hatfield Hall. |
The 7:30 p.m. concert honors the late Benjamin
Benjaminov, who served as chemistry professor at Rose-Hulman for 31
years and was the first coordinator of the college’s performing arts
series. Tickets are $12 for adults, $10 for non-RHIT students and free
for RHIT students. Persons can reserve tickets by calling (812) 877-8544
or visiting the Hatfield Hall ticket office from 1-5 p.m. Tickets will
also be available at the door on Friday night.
Since being the first American to win a prize at the
prestigious International Chopin Competition in Warsaw, Poland, at age
23, Auer has been recognized as a leading interpreter of the works of
Chopin. He has returned to Poland for well over 20 concert tours,
playing in every major city and with every major orchestra.
“I was not eager to be known as a (Chopin) ‘specialist’,
and fought against it for a long time,” stated Auer in a recent
interview. “I can’t deny that I feel a very special closeness, love and
authority when I approach this music, so I know I’ll continue to meet
his challenges to the best of my abilities.”
The second part of Auer’s Rose-Hulman concert will
feature a series of Chopin preludes, appropriately titled “24 Preludes,
op. 28”, a creative 40-minute piece that challenges the pianist and
listener because of its rapidity and depth of the mood changes between
each prelude. Auer will also perform Schubert’s “Impromptu, op. 90, no.
1” and Beethoven’s “Sonata in A flat, op. 110.”
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| The concert honors the late Benjamin
Benjaminov, who served as chemistry professor at Rose-Hulman for
31 years and was the first coordinator of the college's
performing arts series. |
“First and foremost, performing music in public is
sharing one of life’s great gifts,” said Auer, professor of piano at
Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. He has played solo recitals
and concertos in well over 30 countries on five continents, and spent
the fall of 2005 teaching and performing in Seoul, Korea.
Auer grew up in Los Angeles and was playing Mozart piano
quartets and the Schumann quintet at the age of eight. He studied at the
Juilliard School and in Paris on a Fulbright grant. Besides the Chopin
Competition, Auer was a prizewinner in the Tchaikovsky Competition in
Moscow, after which he was invited to the White House. He also took
first prize in the Concours Marguerite Long in Paris, as well as prizes
in the Queen Elisabeth and Beethoven Competitions. Now, years later,
these and other contests regularly invite him to be on their juries.
Auer has made a number of acclaimed recordings and is
currently working to record several of piano works by Schubert,
Beethoven and Faure.
“When I was young I was drawn to some of the deepest and
most spiritually challenging music – late Beethoven, late Schumann,
Schubert and Brahms – but I loved Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev almost
equally,” Auer stated. “Now that I am older, late Beethoven has been
joined by Mozart and Bach, while the music of Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev
and many more romantic masters still continue to delight me.”
Rose-Hulman’s performing arts series has two shows
upcoming in January: Encore Engineers, showcasing student performers, on
Jan. 20; and LUMA: Theatre of Light, on Jan. 26. More information about
all shows is available at
www.rose-hulman.edu/performingarts. |
