Photo Credit: Jay Mallin
ST. MARY’S CITY, Md. – St. Mary’s College of MD Musician-in-Residence Brian Ganz will resume his free popular PianoTalk concert series on Wednesday, September 25 at 11:30am in the Recital Hall of the Dodge Performing Arts Center on the college campus. He will be joined by SMCM colleague Rie Moore in a performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, K. 488. Mr. Ganz will play the solo piano part and Ms. Moore will accompany him on second piano in a reduction of the orchestra part. For more information call (240) 895-4498 or visit bit.ly/3XuEnKS
“I am so excited to resume my PianoTalk series with the partnership of Rie Moore, who knows this concerto intimately,” pianist Ganz said recently. “We will discuss and then perform this masterpiece, one of Mozart’s greatest works. The first movement is tender and reflective. The second movement can strike a listener as perhaps the most achingly, mournfully beautiful music ever composed. The third movement is pure joy, a romp that is as fun to play as it is to listen to.”
Ganz has appeared as soloist with such orchestras as the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the National Philharmonic, the Baltimore and the National Symphonies, the City of London Sinfonia, and L’Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo. He has performed in many of the world’s major concert halls and has played under the baton of such conductors as Leonard Slatkin, Mstislav Rostropovich, Pinchas Zukerman, Jerzy Semkow and Yoel Levi. A critic for La Libre Belgique wrote of Ganz’s work: “We don’t have the words to speak of this fabulous musician who lives music with a generous urgency and brings his public into a state of intense joy.”
Ganz will be joined by pianist Rie Moore, his colleague on the music department faculty. Ms. Moore is well known to audiences in the college community for her richly creative programming and evocative artistry at the piano. In 2020, she received an Independent Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council for her program As if heard from within and was selected as one of the 48 competitors to perform at the Cliburn International Amateur Piano Competition.
In March 2021, her first pre-recorded program for solo piano, Beyond Darkness, was released to audience acclaim. She appeared in late 2021 as one of the speakers at the TEDxGreatMills event, on which she spoke about her new approach to concert programming. Rie Moore was also invited by The Cliburn International Amateur Piano Competition to perform as one of its 39 competitors in 2022, and was selected to perform as one of the 8 performing artists featured in the Maryland Arts Directory Triennial Exhibition (a juried exhibition) organized by the Maryland State Arts Council and Maryland Art Place in 2023.
Most recently she was invited to perform as part of the teacher program in PianoTexas International Festival and Academy (formerly known as the TCU/Cliburn Piano Institute) in June 2024. She is scheduled to present Prompt -Response, her new program featuring works by J.S. Bach paired with other composers, in her upcoming performance as part of Benny Morgan Concert Series at College of Southern Maryland in March 2025.
