Hailed by the New York Times for his “fearless performances,” and "one of the leading figures in the current renaissance of performer-composers” pianist and composer Michael Stephen Brown devotes his first solo recital program at Lincoln Center to showcasing the complexity and evolution of piano writing and exploring how different composers, writing in different styles, examined and expressed human interaction, love, and connection.

The concert opens with Haydn's Fantasia in C Major, followed by tributes to Haydn by Ravel, Debussy, and Brown himself. Ravel’s masterwork, Miroirs is next; Brown's recording of the work spurred the BBC Music Magazine to ask, "How many pianists realise the luminosity and the quietest dynamics [of Ravel] as well as Brown?" Audiences will be introduced to pianist-composer Delphine Von Schauroth, who wrote Songs without Words for Mendelssohn, who once considered marrying her. Brown also offers his own Breakup Etude for Right Hand Alone, a work he wrote in the midst of a relationship ending during pandemic isolation. Two transcriptions from Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night’s Dream bring the program to a close.