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UNCG’s Music Collection Grows with Gift from Late Cellist
Guest concert Nov. 17 will mark the special occasion
 
GREENSBORO — The personal music collection of the late cellist Fritz Magg is being donated to The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, which will celebrate the major gift with a concert Sunday, Nov. 17. Pianist Kari Miller, Magg’s widow, and cellist Elizabeth Bielman, a former student and assistant principal cellist with the N.C. Symphony, will perform.

The concert will be at 7:30 p.m. in the School of Music Organ Recital Hall, and will feature Beethoven’s boisterous “C major Sonata,” Paul Hindemith’s “Solo Sonata,” and the rhapsodic “Sonata in G Minor” of Frederic Chopin.

Magg’s personal music collection is being given to UNCG’s Walter Clinton Jackson Library, and will be housed in the Special Collections and Rare Books division. Miller will officially announce the donation at the post-concert reception to which all concertgoers are invited.

“With the Magg library donation, the cello collection is now even more remarkable than it was - truly the envy of the cello world,” said Brooks Whitehouse, UNCG cello professor. “It sets the UNCG School of Music apart from all other schools as a place for the research and study of the cello repertoire.  We are extremely grateful to Dr. Miller for this extraordinary gift.”

Magg served for 36 years as chair of the highly regarded Indiana University School of Music String Department.  A former member of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, he toured the world with the Gordon and Berkshire String Quartets, and was soloist with major American symphony orchestras. In 1998, he was chosen by the American String Teachers Association to receive the Artist Teacher Award, the organization's most prestigious recognition of excellence in teaching.

The UNCG Library already has the largest collection of cello music in the world.  The Magg collection will join those of five other world-renowned cellists: Luigi Silva, Elizabeth Cowling, Rudolf Matz, Janos Scholz and Maurice Eisenberg. The collection currently holds over 5,000 manuscript and published music scores, and the Magg donation will broaden the collection significantly. The UNCG collection is known to cellists throughout the world as a first and often last stop for cello repertoire research.

Music librarian and cellist Sarah Dorsey said the precise contents of the donation is currently unknown but she is looking forward to the surprises it will likely hold.

“It’s a combination of the scores and the markings in the scores that’s important,” she said. “People can see what bowings and fingerings were used. It helps in interpreting the music.”

Both of the evening’s performers have lifelong musical associations with each other and Magg.  Miller toured extensively as a recitalist with him, and Bielman studied with him at Indiana University.  In addition, Miller and Bielman collaborated on several degree recitals while at IU. In 1997, Fritz Magg collaborated with his former student and the cellists of the N.C. Symphony in a “Cellobration” featuring concerts, master classes and workshops. Miller and Bielman continued their collaboration after Magg’s death later that year.

The evening’s program will feature three standards of the cello repertoire. The Beethoven “C major Sonata” contains brilliant writing with characteristic drama and conciseness. The Hindemith “Solo Sonata” is fiendishly difficult and dramatic in an accessible 20th century style. The Chopin sonata bears the composer’s trademark virtuosic piano writing, complemented by arching melodies in the cello line.

Tickets are available from the UNCG Box Office (334-4TIX) from noon to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, or one half hour prior to the concert at the School of Music. Prices are $8 for adults, $5 for seniors, and $3 for students. For a complete, up-to-date listing of concerts at the School of Music, visit http://musical.uncg.edu. 

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