Steinway Artist Eugene Alcalay performs selections from Beethoven’s “Diabelli” Variation and Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition”
In 1819 Anton Diabelli, an amateur composer and music publisher who wanted to advertise his firm composed a little waltz and asked 51 composers in Austrian Empire, including Beethoven, Hummel, Schubert, and even the eleven-year-old Liszt to write one variation each. Beethoven actually disliked Diabelli’s waltz, calling it “a shoemaker’s patch”, but he became obsessed with it and wrote 33 variations – his longest piano work – and sent it to the astonished Diabelli in 1823. This performance features selected variations from the 55-minute work.

Mussorgsky wrote his most famous work for piano, Pictures at an Exhibition, in 1874. The work was inspired by a posthumous exhibition of paintings and drawings by his friend Victor Hartmann.

This free concert is sponsored by Steinway Piano Society and Steinway Piano Gallery of Madison. Seating is limited. Please RSVP at (608)237-7373 or email events@SteinwayMadison.com

This entry was posted on Friday, April 3rd, 2009 at 6:38 pm and is filed under Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.