Beethoven's Complete Works for Piano

Is Beethoven’s music great? How do we know? NEC Piano Department Chair Bruce Brubaker encourages concertgoers to celebrate and reconsider Beethoven’s music and legacy. NEC pays tribute to the piano music of Beethoven throughout 2020 with more than 75 pianists performing in 13 concerts. They will perform every one of Beethoven’s solo piano works—the only concert series undertaking this programming in the world.

Well-known favorites like “Für Elise” and the “Moonlight” Sonata stand beside Beethoven’s rarely performed works in concert. Piano seminars and masterclasses by artists such as Stewart Goodyear, Andrew Schartmann, and Alessio Bax allow the public to join NEC students in exploring the challenges and complexities that pianists face in the world today. The “Beethoven 250” piano series ends with a monumental 10-hour tour de force of all of Beethoven’s piano sonatas performed in one day.

A virtuoso pianist himself, Beethoven composed dozens of works for the fortepiano, often making use of the new musical resources of the instrument as it developed rapidly throughout the composer’s lifetime. Approximately 1/3 of each concert program will feature rarely performed sets of variations that may offer insight into Beethoven’s own performances as an improviser.

This series of piano department concerts is dedicated to pianist Russell Sherman in his 90th birthday year. Mr. Sherman is Distinguished Artist-in-Residence at NEC, and the first American pianist to have recorded all of the piano sonatas and concertos of Beethoven.

Beethoven’s Complete Works for Piano, Program 4
Tuesday, March 3, 2020 | 8pm
NEC’s Williams Hall | 290 Huntington Ave., Boston, MA
Tickets: Free with RSVP

WoO 54: Lustig-Traurig (Bagatelle) for piano in C major (1802)
Opus 33: Seven Bagatelles (1802)
Opus 119: Eleven new Bagatelles (1822)
WoO 53: Allegretto (Bagatelle) for piano in C minor (1796–97)
WoO 56: Allegretto (Bagatelle) for piano in C major (1803, rev. 1822)
WoO 52: Presto (Bagatelle) for piano in C minor (1795, rev. 1798 and 1822)
Opus 126: Six Bagatelles (1823)
WoO 59: Poco moto (Bagatelle) in A minor ("Für Elise") (c. 1810)
WoO 60: Ziemlich lebhaft (Bagatelle) for piano in B-flat Major (1818)
Opus 35: Fifteen variations and a fugue on an original theme in E-flat Major ("Eroica") (1802)

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