Gretna releases 'monsters' for final Steinway performances

Two-year concert series performances conclude at Elizabethtown College in March, April

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Gilles Vonsattel

ELIZABETHTOWN, PA (02/13/2014)(readMedia)-- Gretna Music winds down its two-year 'Monsters of the Steinway' concert series, highlighting Elizabethtown College's Long Steinway, with two final performances. Cost of the concerts, held at 7:30 p.m. each night in Elizabethtown College's Leffler Chapel and Performance Center, are $20 and $15.

The third performer in the series takes the stage Saturday, March 15, for "Vonsattel Plays Ives." Swiss-born American pianist Gilles Vonsattel takes on the transcendental challenges of Ives's Concord Sonata.

Winner of the 2008 Avery Fisher Career Grant, Vonsattel's repertoire ranges from Bach's Art of the Fugue to works by Iannis Xenakis. Equally comfortable as a soloist and chamber musician, he is a former member of the Chamber Music Society Two.

Vonsattel began as an artist member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in the 2013-2014 season and made his solo recital debut at the Wigmore Hall, the Lucerne Festival. He has performed at Boston's Symphony Hall, Cleveland's Severance Hall, Herbst Theatre in San Francisco, Aspen Music Festival's Benedict Music Tent, Manchester's Bridgewater Hall and Geneva's Victoria Hall. He has been heard frequently on NPR's Performance Today, Radio France Musique, CBC, ARD and the BBC.

After studying with pianist David Deveau in Boston, Mass., Vonsattel earned his bachelor's degree in political science and economics from Columbia University and his master's degree from The Juilliard School, where he worked with Jerome Lowenthal. He is assistant professor of piano at University of Massachusetts/Amherst.

The final concert of the series, "Wosner Plays Schubert," spotlights Shai Wosner performing Schubert's magnificent B-flat Major Sonata Saturday, April 5.

Wosner has attracted international recognition for his exceptional artistry, musical integrity and creative insight. He is a favorite among audiences and critics and has been widely praised for his interpretations of Franz Schubert's solo works, both in concert and in recording.

Wosner recently performed a Schubert-themed recital at the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater and an all-Schubert program at Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival. He continues to present Schubert works in recital throughout the 2013-2014 season, with performances at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, in Fresno, Calif.; in Schenectady, N.Y.; at Wigmore Hall in London; and at the Festival de Musica de Camara in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

Wosner is a recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, as well as a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award. He was in residence with the BBC as a New Generation Artist, during which he played frequently with the BBC orchestras, including appearances conducting Mozart concertos from the keyboard with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

The pianist was born in Israel and studied with Emanuel Krasovsky as well as composition, theory and improvisation with André Hajdu. He later studied at The Juilliard School with Emanuel Ax. Wosner now resides in New York, N.Y., with his wife and two children.

Contact: Carl Kane at 717-361-1508 or kanec@etown.edu

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Elizabethtown College, located in historic Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, is a private coed institution offering more than four dozen liberal arts, fine and performing arts, science and engineering, business, communications and education degrees. Learn more: http://www.etown.edu/about/

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