Paul Orgel to perform Haydn recital, Dec. 9
MIDDLEBURY — Middlebury Community Music Center will host pianist Paul Orgel this Sunday, Dec. 9, at 3 p.m. for an all-Haydn piano recital to benefit for the center.
A gifted and inspiring musician, Orgel has concertized throughout the United States, Europe, and China as a recitalist, soloist with orchestra and chamber musician. Critics have praised his playing for its “subtlety and attention to nuance” (Philadelphia Inquirer), “rare pathos” (New York Times), “brilliant technique, sense of humor and fantasy” (Bridgeport Post), “warmth and beauty of sound” (Barre-Montpelier Times Argus), and “power and grace” (Vermont Times).
A versatile musician with wide-ranging interests and a varied repertoire, he has given notable concerts in such venues as New York’s Merkin Hall, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Jordan Hall and the Gardner Museum in Boston, the Ordway Theater in St. Paul and at the San Francisco Conservatory.
Orgel has specialized in Czech music, performing programs of the complete piano music of Janá?ek, and music from Terezin, and as a scholar of classical performance practice, he has given recitals of Beethoven and Haydn on the Viennese fortepiano. He can be heard on recordings on CRI, (the Grammy nominated “Music of Louis Moyse,” with flutist and MCMC faculty member Karen Kevra), Capstone, Phoenix USA (Piano Music of Berman, Haas, Klein, and Ullmann) and MSR (Suk, Chausson, and Reger). Orgel was educated at the Oberlin and New England Conservatories, and Boston University. He holds a doctorate in piano performance from Temple University.
In Orgel’s words: “Haydn was, of course, classical music’s tireless inventor, the Benjamin Franklin of composers; founding father of the String Quartet, Piano Trio, Symphony, and to an extent, the Piano Sonata, Mass, and Oratorio.
His final works in all of these genres are his best; the freest, the most expansive and technically accomplished, and most generously expressive in slow music and fast.
My all-Haydn program features the early, intriguing Sonata in G Minor, his last three, large-scale piano sonatas, (E-flat, D, and E-flat Major) and the unexpectedly impassioned F Minor Variations.
When I play Haydn’s music, I feel I’m having a wide-ranging, sometimes intimate conversation with the wittiest possible companion.”
Suggested donation (at the door): $10 general admission, $20 generous admission.