The festival was conceived in 2006 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Schumann's death. Its organizers, graduate student Sezi Seskir and her professor, the irrepressible keyboard master Malcolm Bilson (who is theoretically retired as a Whiton Professor of Music at Cornell), have worked on this project for more than a year creating the programs that focus on Schumann's music for piano. In keeping with Bilson's major teaching and research approach, performances will be on period instruments or on authentic reproductions.
Schumann's music is rich in tone color and melody. At times it is wonderfully quirky, yet it also conveys very complex and deep feelings. Performing it well presents a real challenge, and mastering its emotional and intellectual content, according to Bilson, takes time. It is "music that works on sentiment." Seskir feels that this piano music is very concentrated, and once you find a way to approach it, it rewards you more than that of any other composer.
At the forefront of the Romantic movement in Europe, Schumann's works also reflect his abiding interest in literature and ideas. Besides several leading works for piano solo, the festival also includes important vocal music and two chamber pieces. Three different pianos will be used - a reproduction of an 1824 Conrad Graf, a Joseph Simon 1835 original instrument, and a French Erard dating from 1868 - and are tuned to 435 Hz, the pitch decreed as standard at a German music conference in 1835, not to the 440 tuning used almost everywhere today. With 6 1/2 octaves, these instruments - with their melodious, less-percussive sound - are smaller and produce cleaner, less ringing tones than the modern piano. The string instruments are also those of the period.
This festival, initiated by Sezi Seskir, was set up informally. The word went out last spring to put on a Schumann festival. Bilson will perform in all three concerts. Playing with him are his present and former students, most notably Seskir, who is Turkish, and met Bilson at a conference in Lübeck, Germany. Working on her DMA in Performance Practice, she has done considerable research and writing on Schumann. Also performing is David Kim, who studied modern piano with Bilson and is now with period instruments. With them are Frédéric Lacroix, Stefania Neonato, and Emily Green, all of whom participated, as did Seskir, in the October 2005 Festival of Early Romantic Piano Music at Cornell, another Bilson project presented in celebration of his 70th birthday. The three singers are soprano Andrea Folan, who used to live and perform here, Canadian baritone Kevin McMillan, and tenor James Barbato, who currently sings with the Tri-Cities Opera in Binghamton. The string players are cellist John Haines-Eitzen and violinist Stephen Miahky, both Cornell faculty, as well as Francesca Vicari.
The music may sound unusual to listeners accustomed to conventional instruments and interpretations. Not only do the instruments have a different tonality and sound texture, but these performances will reflect Bilson's major teaching, lecturing, and performing principle: One studies the scores carefully and performs what is on the page with as much attention to detail as possible. This may seem obvious, but as Bilson points out, you don't hear performances of Kinderscenen at the tempos marked in the score. Much of Schumann's music was edited by Schumann's wife, Clara - a leading 19th-century concert pianist in her own right - and she made many changes. Seskir's studies of early recording made by Clara's students have provided a good idea now of how this music was played in Schumann's time.
And what about that retirement Malcolm Bilson was thinking of in January last year? When I asked him, he said, "What retirement?" His schedule is busy as usual. He is teaching a course at Eastman in Rochester, and has four graduate students at Cornell. He continues to perform and lecture on reading the score in this country and abroad. Next month he attends a conference in Stanford on old recordings and what we learn from them. He is organizing a Cornell workshop in August. What a retirement indeed.
But for now, we can hear Bilson and his gifted students and colleagues perform the music of Robert Schumann right here in Ithaca.
For complete listings and information, visit our Hot Picks. All concerts are open to the public and free of charge.
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