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By Lanita Withers Goins, University Relations
Contact: (336) 334-3890
Posted 10-9-09
GREENSBORO, N.C. — UNCG music professor Andrew Willis will mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of German composer Felix Mendelssohn with a recital played on a piano as old as the compositions themselves.
The Oct. 16 concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the School of Music Recital Hall. Tickets are $10 general, $6 seniors and $4 for students, and may be purchased by calling the University Box Office at (336) 334-4849 or online at boxoffice.uncg.edu. Proceeds will help fund programs in the School of Music.
The recital will be performed on a Bösendorfer grand piano built in 1841, around the time when Mendelssohn wrote “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” which includes the famous “Wedding March.”
Performing on a period instrument lends authenticity to the music, Willis said. “On a Romantic piano, many unforeseen possibilities of color and timing emerge through the tone and touch of the instrument, and many exquisitely calculated details of the composer's notation can be clearly heard.”
“I try to imagine what Mendelssohn would have liked to hear,” Willis added. “Since this is the kind of piano he would have played on, it gives me a better sense of imagining the kind of sound he had in mind when he wrote the music."
A prolific piano composer, Mendelssohn was part of an amazing quartet of composers all born within three years of each other, Willis said. But of those noted Romantic Era composers – the others are Robert Schumann, Frédéric Chopin and Franz Liszt – Mendelssohn is the least well known, he added.
Willis hopes to shine light on Mendelssohn’s work and legacy. “He was better than people realize,” he said. “Maybe I can help people be aware of how wonderful the music really is.”
For more information, visit music.uncg.edu.