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Retiring
Music Prof to Perform on Custom Instrument
From Saturday, September
29, to Tuesday, October 2, Elsie Irwin Sweeney Professor
of Music Monica Jakuc will present three performances as
part of “A Celebration of an
1819 Graf Replica Fortepiano.”
The concerts are the first in
a yearlong series of events celebrating Jakuc's retirement
from Smith on June 30, 2008, after 39 years on the faculty.
Monica Jakuc and her Graf
replica fortepiano |
The Graf replica fortepiano,
a 6 ½-octave
instrument, was made for Jakuc in 2003 by Paul McNulty, an
American instrument builder who now lives in Divisov, Czech
Republic. The instrument is a replica of a 19th-century fortepiano
made by Conrad Graf, the most celebrated Viennese builder
of his time.
All the concerts will take place in Sweeney Concert Hall,
Sage, and are free and open to the public.
On Saturday, September
29, at 8 p.m., Jakuc will present an all-Schubert concert
featuring the Sonata in C Minor, D. 958. One of the three
last piano sonatas that Schubert wrote, the C minor is
the darkest, featuring an opening theme reminiscent of
Beethoven, and a mad tarantella for a final movement. Preceding
the sonata, tenor Peter Shea will partner with Jakuc in
songs with texts by Goethe. Inspired by the greatest living
poet of his time, these songs, written between 1814 and
1816, represent Schubert’s early triumphs
in the lied, a genre that he transformed from “pleasant
parlor entertainment to an art form almost frightening in
its intimate and intense concentration,” according
to Shea. The Goethe-lieder will end with The Erlking,
one of Schubert’s most powerful, dramatic, and chilling
songs.
On Sunday, September 30, at 4 p.m., Ellen Redman, flute,
and Kivie Cahn-Lipman, cello, will join Jakuc for a Concert
and Conversation on historic and modern pianos. They will
play excerpts from the G Minor Trio, Op. 63, by Carl Maria
von Weber, with the Graf replica and also with a modern piano,
and discuss the differences in the two performances.
On Tuesday, October 2, at 12:30 p.m., the Music in the Noon
Hour series will feature Redman, Cahn-Lipman, and Jakuc in
a full performance of the Weber Trio in G Minor on the earlier
instruments.
Inspired by Malcolm Bilson,
Jakuc has performed on early pianos since 1986. She is
a frequent guest artist at the E.M. Frederick Collection
in Ashburnham, Mass., and was an organizer and performer
at the international HaydnFest 1990, co-sponsored by Smith
and the Westfield Center for Early Keyboard Studies. As
frequent guest performer and board member of Arcadia Players,
the Pioneer Valley’s early music
ensemble, she has sometimes featured her Graf replica fortepiano
in Schubert concerts.
New York audiences first
heard Jakuc at Alice Tully Hall in 1980 in "A Program of Twentieth-Century Music for
Two Pianos," with colleague Kenneth Fearn, professor
emeritus of music at Smith. Her performance of Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations
at Merkin Hall was hailed by The New York Times as “an
auspicious debut...one will observe Ms. Jakuc’s career
with more than usual interest.” Her 1988 London debut
included the premier of a piece written for her by Ronald
Perera, the Elsie Irwin Sweeney Professor Emeritus of Music.
Jakuc has toured Japan and Alaska and appears often on both
U.S. coasts. She also delivers lecture-recitals on women
composers and has been a featured artist at International
Association of Women in Music concerts in London and Washington,
D.C.
Jakuc's discography includes fortepiano sonatas by Marianne
von Martinez, Marianna von Auenbrugger, and Joseph Haydn
on Titanic Records, and Francesca LeBrun's complete Opus
1 Sonatas for fortepiano and violin, with Dana Maiben, on
Dorian Discovery. A new CD, Fantasies for Fortepiano,
available on cdbaby.com, has just been released. It features
fantasies by Mozart, C.P.E. Bach, Haydn, and Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata.
Born in Newark, New Jersey,
Jakuc received bachelors and master’s degrees from
the Juilliard School, where she studied with James Friskin
and Beveridge Webster. She has also worked with Leon Fleisher,
Russell Sherman, and Konrad Wolff, a pupil of Artur Schnabel.
The series of concerts celebrating
Jakuc's retirement will continue on November 17 with her
solo piano performance with Smith College Orchestra); and
a concert on February 24, 2008.
Department of Music press release |
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