Headlines and highlights from the 2023-24 season

The piano keyboard – gleaming in the spotlights – is a row of sharks teeth. How to tame the beast? How do different composers write for the instrument? And how – on a percussion instrument with 88 hammers hitting strings and three pedals for 2 feet – do you create illusions of smooth sound, multiple layers of sound and sustain sound? Pianist Robert Taub shared insights on how to use your hands and feet to coax the widest palette of sound from the piano, and how the music each of the composers on the Piano Passions concert use the piano to its fullest.

Robert Taub returned to Levinsky Hall for a very special solo piano recital that included some of the most challenging and expressive piano music ever composed.

Beethoven – Sonata in E major, Op.109
Ravel – Gaspard de la Nuit
Chopin – Etudes Op.25 no.7 and Op.25 no.12, Nocturne Op.27 no.2, Ballade Op.23
Schönberg – Klavierstück Op.33a
Liszt – Mephisto Waltz

Mark Forkgen, conductor

Robert Taub, piano

Musica Viva welcomed the 27-member London Gershwin Players and conductor Mark Forkgen in an upbeat All-Gershwin Evening

Overture to the Musical Girl Crazy
Porgy and Bess Fantasy
American in Paris
Rhapsody in Blue (with Robert Taub, pianist)

original rarely-heard Paul Whiteman Band version on the occasion of the 100^th anniversary of its composition in January 1924.