Acclaimed Pianist and Scholar Charles Rosen Here for Lecture & Performance, April 14 & 15
April 5, 2007
April 5, 2007, Greencastle, Ind. - Internationally renowned pianist and scholar Charles Rosen will speak and perform at DePauw as part of the University's Performing Arts Series, April 14-15. One of the most widely respected musicians of our time, Rosen's lecture will take place on Saturday, April 14 at 3 p.m., followed by a solo piano recital on Sunday, April 15, at 7:30 p.m. Both events will take place in Thompson Recital Hall, located in DePauw’s Performing Arts Center.
Works to be performed will include Mozart’s Sonata in A Major (the infamous “Rondo Alla Turca”), Beethoven’s mammoth Op. 111 Sonata, and diverse works by Chopin, including the Barcarolle, Berceuse, and fourth Ballade.
The breadth of Charles Rosen’s endeavors reflects a remarkable synthesis of performing musician, scholar, writer and lecturer. He is acclaimed worldwide for his performances andrecordings of works ranging from Bach to those by the twentieth century’s most important composers. Rosen’s unique combination of musical sensitivity and powerful intelligence 
produces interpretations of exceptional understanding and impact. He has been heard in major concert halls and at leading festivals throughout the world and continues to perform in music capitals here and abroad.
Described by the Boston Globe as “an explosively intelligent musician who can convey his highly original ideas with all the silkiness of sounds and subtlety of rubato of the great romantic virtuosos,” Charles Rosen is particularly renowned for his interpretation of Beethoven and the Romantic repertoire, inheriting the great Romantic piano tradition in a direct line from some of its most illustrious proponents.
Born in New York City, Mr. Rosen was enrolled at The Juilliard School at the age of six, leaving five years later to study with Moriz Rosenthal, a pupil of Liszt, and his wife, Hedwig Kanner, a pupil of Theodor Leschetizky. Several important twentieth century composers have called upon Rosen to record their works, among them, Igor Stravinsky, Pierre Boulez, and Elliot Carter, whose music he has championed throughout his career.
As a speaker, Charles Rosen’s talks are characterized by depth, breadth, wit, and the effortless elegance of the natural communicator, and as a writer he has been hailed for his extraordinary perception in the fields of music, art, literature and intellectual history. Among his most celebrated books are The Classical Style, considered a standard reference for professional musicians (and winner of the National Book Award for Arts and Letters), Sonata Forms, which was 
nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and The Romantic Generation: Music 1827-1850, an expanded version of his six Norton lectures.
Rosen’s lecture will be preceded on April 14 by the third annual DePauw Young Artists Piano Competition, which welcomes young pianists from across the country to compete in Thompson Recital Hall for cash and scholarship prizes of up to $5000.
Before the Sunday evening piano recital, the DePauw Symphony Orchestra will present its annual Concerto Winners Concert, performing Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto no. 1, the first movement of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto no. 2, Liszt’s Totentanz, the Concerto pour flute by Jacques Ibert, and “My Man’s Gone Now” from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. The concert will take place 3 p.m. in Gobin United Memorial Methodist Church.
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