The 26th Annual Music
Festival at Walnut Hill
胡桃山音樂營
July 20
to August 13, 2017
Concerts
and Master Classes
Monday, August 7, 2017, 3 PM
at Delbridge Center
Russell Sherman,
piano master class
~Program~ HAYDN: sonata
in C major, Hob XVI:50
Allegro
Gehan
Zhang
CHOPIN:
Ballade No. 3 in A-flat Major, Op. 47
Artur
Haftman
SCHUBERT:
Sonata in C minor, D 958
Allegro
Betty
Zhang
Steinway piano provided by M. Steinert &
Sons
Meet The Artists
Russell
Sherman Distinguished
Artist-in-Residence, New England Conservatory
of Music As
a Distinguished Artist-in-Residence at NEC, pianist
Russell Sherman offers his insights to students through
masterclasses, performance seminars, studio classes, and
coachings.
An eloquent communicator both on
and off the concert stage, one of Boston’s musical treasures,
legendary pianist Russell Sherman continues to garner accolades
from critics and audiences alike for his grace, imagination, and
poetry. The New York Times calls him “one of the best
pianists in this or any other country.” As the author of a
highly acclaimed book Piano Pieces (a rhapsodic
compilation of vignettes and personal anecdotes from Sherman’s
life experiences as a pianist and teacher), Russell Sherman has
been praised not only as an ingenious virtuoso but also as an
insightful master.
Sherman has performed with such
major orchestras as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago
Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York
Philharmonic, Orchestra of St. Luke’s (with whom he performed
the five Beethoven concertos), Philadelphia Orchestra,
Pittsburgh Symphony, and the San Francisco Symphony. Abroad,
Sherman has played in the major cities of Austria, Canada, the
Czech Republic, England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain,
Netherlands, Russia, Korea, China, and South America.
In recital, Russell Sherman has
appeared on Carnegie Hall’s Keyboard Virtuoso Series,
California’s Ambassador Foundation Series, the Distinguished
Artists Series at New York’s Tisch Center for the Arts at the
92nd Street Y, and the Bank of Boston Celebrity Series. He has
performed at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, Sarasota’s Van
Wezel Performing Arts Hall, Boston’s Symphony Hall, Isabella
Stewart Gardner Museum, Jordan Hall, Columbia University’s
Miller Theater, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Chicago’s
Orchestra Hall. Additionally, he has appeared at the Ravinia
Festival, the Hollywood Bowl, the Mostly Mozart Festival, and
the Wolf Trap Festival, as well as recitals at Spain’s Santander
Festival and Germany’s Ruhr Triennale Festival. In 2010, he
collaborated with Mark Morris Dance Group alongside Minsoo Sohn
and the Orchestra of Emmanuel Music in the Boston premiere of
Mozart Dances, presented by Celebrity Series of Boston.
Sherman is a prolific recording
artist. He has recorded the five Beethoven concertos with the
Czech Philharmonic and the Monadnock Festival Orchestra, and the
complete Beethoven sonatas, recorded as five dual-CD sets (each
having been released individually and as a complete set). The
entire Beethoven sonatas project has been called “a set for the
ages” by Bernard Jacobson in Fanfare. This makes
Sherman the first American pianist to have recorded all of the
sonatas and concertos of Beethoven. His earlier recording of
Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes was critically acclaimed:
Anthony Tommasini in a 1999 New York Times piece said,
“Several
impressive recordings of Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes
prove that these audaciously difficult works are actually
playable and triumphantly pianistic. But none make Liszt’s
visionary understanding of what the piano could do more
palpable and exciting than Russell Sherman’s extraordinary
1990 recording.”
Sherman has also recorded
Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F, Brahms’s Variations
on a Theme by Paganini, Op. 35 and Fantasies, Op. 116,
Chopin’s 24 Preludes, Op. 28, Schubert’s Sonata in
D major, D. 850 and Sonata in B-flat major, D. 960,
both Grieg and Schumann concertos, and works by Liszt, including
the B minor Sonata, Don Juan Fantasy, and
transcriptions. He has also recorded Mozart’s two concertos in
minor keys plus solo fantasies with the Orchestra of Emmanuel
Music under Craig Smith. Additional recordings include a GM
Recording CD, Premieres & Commissions, in which he
performs contemporary repertoire by Schoenberg, Schuller, Helps,
Perle, and Shapey. Except for Schoenberg’s Six Piano Pieces,
he has personally premiered and commissioned all of these works.
Sherman’s releases on Avie Records include a CD of Debussy’s
Estampes, Images Book II and Préludes Book II,
a DVD of his live performance of the Liszt Etudes
d’exécution transcendante, and most recently, the complete
Chopin Mazurkas. Sherman has also performed and
recorded the complete sonatas of Mozart, the Bach English
Suites and the complete piano works of Schoenberg.
Russell Sherman was born in 1930
and educated in New York, beginning piano studies at age six. By
age eleven, Sherman was studying with Eduard Steuermann, a pupil
and friend of Ferruccio Busoni and Arnold Schoenberg. Sherman
graduated from Columbia University at age nineteen with a degree
in the humanities. He was Visiting Professor at Harvard
University and is currently a Distinguished Artist-in-Residence
at New England Conservatory. Sherman continues to explore, and
to merit the title “a thinking man’s virtuoso.”
B.A., Columbia College (N.Y.).
Piano with Edward Steuermann; composition with Erich Itor Kahn.
Recordings on Advent, Sine Qua Non, Vanguard, Pro Arte, Albany,
GM.