Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts

Jeffrey Siegel’s Keyboard Conversations® Series Continues with Three Great B’s –Bach, Beethoven and...Barber! Program at Kimmel Center, Feb. 7

JANUARY 21, 2011

"His performances were expressive and full of passion! This is an artist who means every note he plays.” –New York Times

 

Acclaimed pianist and music educator Jeffrey Siegel’s Keyboard Conversations® returns to the Kimmel Center with Three Great 'Bs' ─ Bach, Beethoven, and…Barber! program on Monday, February 7, 2011 at 7:30pm in Perelman Theater.  Part concert and commentary format, Siegel’s program highlights the works of three celebrated composers, and features: Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue; Beethoven’s Appassionata; and select works by Samuel Barber, the great American composer born a century ago in West Chester, Pa. who won Pulitzer Prizes for his opera, Vanessa, and his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra.

 

The Los Angeles Times says, "Jeffrey Siegel has everything: massive technique, musical sensitivity and character, wide tonal resources, immense reserves of power, and the ability to communicate.”

 

Three Great ‘Bs’: Bach, Beethoven and…Barber! is the second concert part of the Keyboard Conversations® series in the 2010/2011Kimmel Center Presents season. On April 25, 2011, Siegel presents his third program, Paris 1911 ─ A Festive Musical Year! at the Kimmel Center, in association with the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts (PIFA).  Paris 1911—A Festive Musical Year! showcases music written and performed in 20th century Paris - including Ravel's Valses Nobles and Sentimentale, preludes of Debussy and Fauré, and Stravinsky's Pétrouchka.

 

Tickets for Jeffrey Siegel's Keyboard Conversations® are available for $30 and can be purchased by calling 215-893-1999, online at www.kimmelcenter.org, or at the Kimmel Center box office, open daily from 10am to 6pm and later on performance evenings. (Additional fees may apply.) For group sales call 215-790-5883.

 

An ongoing series for more than twenty-five years, Jeffrey Siegel's Keyboard Conversations® consistently attract avid classical music lovers who wish to increase their understanding and enjoyment of familiar works and also reaches out to newcomers who wish to learn more about classical music. Siegel presents an informal, accessible and highly entertaining introduction to the vast repertoire of the piano and classical music in his shows. Primarily a concert, Siegel’s shows offer provoking questions behind why, how, where and about what or whom the music was written. "My hope is that the remarks I share will make the music more accessible, the listening experience more focused and meaningful," says Siegel.

 

“The Leonard Bernstein of the piano—Siegel’s programs strengthen the bonds between the music and the listener and are as welcome as they are rare.” –Chicago Tribune

 

Jeffrey Siegel has been a soloist with the world's great orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Moscow State Symphony, all the major London orchestras, the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra and many others. As a conductor, he has collaborated with luminaries such as Claudio Abbado, Pierre Boulez, Charles Dutoit, Neeme Järvi, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Leonard Slatkin, Michael Tilson Thomas and David Zinman, among others. He has led the Pittsburgh, Milwaukee and Saint Louis Symphony Orchestras, The Minnesota Orchestra and The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, as well as orchestras in France, Scandinavia and South America.  

 

In June 2006, Siegel released four CDs of Keyboard Conversations®: Mozart and Friends, The Power and Passion of Beethoven, The Romanticism of the Russian Soul and The Romance of the Piano (Random House Audio Publishing Group). Most recently, Siegel released a new CD entitled Music for the Young - and Young At Heart (2009), available exclusively at his concerts. Following the celebrated reception of Keyboard Conversations® in the United Kingdom last season, Keyboard Conversations continue in 2010-2011 at London’s newest arts complex, Kings Place.

 

KIMMEL CENTER PRESENTS:

 

Monday, February 7, 2011 | 7:30pm
Perelman Theater
Jeffrey Siegel's Keyboard Conversations®
Three Great 'Bs' -- Bach, Beethoven, and…Barber!

 

Johann Sebastian Bach         

Prelude in G Major, BWV 884 from the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2

Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, BWV 903

 

Samuel Barber

Excursion, No. 3. Op. 20

Excursion, No. 4, Op. 20

Fugue from Piano Sonata, Op. 26

 

-INTERMISSION-

 

Ludwig van Beethoven

Sonata No. 23 in F Minor, Op. 57 (Appassionata)

Allegro assai

Andante con moto

Allegro ma non troppo – Presto

 

Q&A with Jeffrey Siegel following performance

 

Kimmel Center, Inc., a charitable, not-for-profit organization, owns, manages, supports and maintains The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, which includes Verizon Hall, Perelman Theater, Innovation Studio and the Merck Arts Education Center.  Kimmel Center, Inc. also manages the Academy of Music, owned by the Philadelphia Orchestra Association, and the University of the Arts’ Merriam Theater. Our mission is to operate a world-class performing arts center that engages and serves a broad audience from throughout the Greater Philadelphia region.

 

The 2010/2011 season is sponsored by Citi, and the Broadway 2010/2011 season is sponsored by Verizon, and American Airlines.  For additional information, visit kimmelcenter.org.

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