An Evening with Michael Stephen Brown
Tue, Mar 19, 2024, 7:30 PM
Alice Tully Hall
2 hours, including intermission
Hailed by the New York Times for his “fearless performances,” Michael Stephen Brown is a sparkling presence on CMS stages.
An exemplary classical artist of today, he is equally adept as a pianist, composer, and musical luminary. In this unique recital—his first solo recital at Lincoln Center—Brown combines his own animated compositions with classics by Haydn, Debussy, Ravel, and others.
Program
Joseph Haydn
(1732–1809)Fantasia in C major for Keyboard, Hob. XVII:4, “Capriccio”
(1789)Claude Debussy
(1862–1918)Hommage à Haydn for Piano
(1909)Maurice Ravel
(1875–1937)Menuet sur le nom d’Haydn for Piano
(1909)Michael Stephen Brown
Etude-Fantasy on the name of Haydn for Piano
(2020)Maurice Ravel
(1875–1937)Miroirs for Piano
(1904–05)Delphine von Schauroth
(1813–1887)Selections from Songs Without Words for Piano, Op. 18
(1830)Felix Mendelssohn
(1809–1847)Fantasie in F-sharp minor for Piano, Op. 28
(1830)Michael Stephen Brown
Breakup Etude for Right Hand Alone for Piano
(2020)Felix Mendelssohn/Rachmaninoff
Scherzo from A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Piano
(1842, arr. 1933)Felix Mendelssohn/Liszt
Wedding March in C major from A Midsummer Night’s Dream
(arr. Brown) (1842)Michael Stephen Brown
Michael Stephen Brown has been described as “one of the leading figures in the current renaissance of performer-composers” (New York Times). Winner of a 2018 Emerging Artist Award from Lincoln Center and a 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant, he is an artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program. He makes regular appearances with orchestras such as the National Philharmonic and the Seattle, Phoenix, North Carolina, and Albany symphonies, and recently has made European recital debuts at the Beethoven-Haus Bonn and the Chopin Museum in Mallorca. He has received commissions from many organizations and some of today’s leading artists, and recently toured his own Piano Concerto around the US and Poland with several orchestras. He performs regularly with his longtime duo partner, cellist Nicholas Canellakis, and has appeared at festivals worldwide. A prolific recording artist, he has three albums in the works, including Mendelssohn+, featuring world premieres of music by one of Mendelssohn’s muses, Delphine von Schauroth. He was the composer- and artist-in-residence at the New Haven Symphony, and winner of the Concert Artists Guild and Copland House Awards. He holds degrees in piano and composition from the Juilliard School, where he studied with Jerome Lowenthal, Robert McDonald, and Samuel Adler. Additional mentors include András Schiff and Richard Goode. An Artist Ambassador for Creatives Care, Brown lives in New York City with his two 19th-century Steinway D pianos, Octavia and Daria.