Piano Concerto 24 Plus Schubert

Featured as part of the Mozart and More Series

Saturday January 24, 2009 7:30PM

Franciscan Center
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Stephen Prutsman, Conductor and Piano

Description:

Stephen Prutsman is one of the music world's most versatile artists. On our Lifestyle series, he will showcase his skills as a composer, where he will perform his jazz-inspired soundtrack to the slapstick Buster Keaton comedy Sherlock Jr. along with four Toledo Symphony members. On this concert, he will display his pianistic skills on a program where he performs one of Mozart's most beloved concerti, the twenty-fourth piano concerto. This concerto is the most fully orchestrated of Mozart's piano concerti, with flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, trumpets, and timpani.

Prutsman will also demonstrate his conducting skills on a program that includes symphonic works by Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach and Schubert's Fourth Symphony, written when the composer was just nineteen years old.

Points of Interest:

* A summarized version of Stephen Prutsman's unusual journey to musical prominence, drawn from his website at www.stephenprutsman.com <http://www.stephenprutsman.com/> :

Born in Los Angeles in 1960, Stephen first began playing the piano by ear before moving on to more formal music studies. In his early teens he was the keyboard player for several art rock groups, including "Cerberus" and "Vysion" and enjoyed a moment of musical irony when he won television's "Gong Show" as a pseudo honky-tonk pianist. While in college, Stephen played jazz in various clubs and lounges throughout southern California by night, and by day worked as the music arranger and pianist for a nationally syndicated televangelist program.

* Many of the nicknames of famous musical works were not bestowed by the composer. However, Schubert did attach the sobriquet "Tragic" to his fourth symphony, one of only two symphonies he composed in a minor key. The name calls attention to the numerous agitated episodes within the work.

Program:

Bach, C.P.E. Sinfonia in G Major* 12'

Mozart Piano Concerto No. 24 in C Minor 31'

INTERMISSION

Schubert Symphony No. 4 in C Minor "Tragic" 31'

*TSO Premiere