Caption: Gathered around their music professor Rob Watson, who is holding Chopin’s sheet music, are, clockwise from left: Chunxing Angela Zhou, Lindsay Parsons, Lawrence Escamilla, Rebecca Pierce, Ramin Farhad, Christie Poetoehena, Christopher Squires, Katrina Dobieski, Cody Smith and Craig Davis. In the middle, is Yoon Yi Jennifer Cho. Photo: Karen Tapia Download Photo
Performance Project
Students to Play Chopin’s Preludes for Piano
Sixteen students from the Music Department’s keyboard studies program will perform the complete preludes for piano written by Frederic Chopin, on April 25 and May 5.
The pianists will travel to Cypress College Wednesday, April 25, to perform for the college’s noon “Concert Hour” in the Fine Arts Building’s Recital Hall, Room 304. Their next appearance is at 8 p.m. Saturday, May 5, in the Recital Hall of the Clayes Performing Arts Center. Both performances are open to the public free of charge.
“This is an unusual project for pianists at a university to engage in,” said Rob Watson, professor of music and keyboard area coordinator. The performers are all his students.
“The bulk of these brief, epigrammatic works was composed between 1835 and 1839, and they were published as a set of 24 pieces, one in each of the major and minor keys, in 1839,” he said.
“Although Chopin arranged them in an order following ascending fifths, with the relative minor following each major key, C major and A minor, G major and E minor, etc., the students will perform them in major and parallel minor sequences,” he explained. “Each student will play one in major, and the other one, in the same tonal center, but in minor mode.”
In addition to the 24 preludes published as “Chopin’s Opus 28,” two additional preludes he wrote, one in 1834 and the other in 1841, also will be performed.
Since the number of students performing is greater than half of the 26 preludes, two pairs of preludes will be performed twice, and one pair will be divided between two students.
The senior music majors in the group are: Craig Davis, Katrina Dobieski (also majoring in communicative disorders), Lawrence Escamilla, Ramin Farhad (also majoring in biological science), Rebecca Pierce, Christie Poetoehena and Christopher Squires. Other undergraduates are Jennifer Chiou, an undeclared senior; junior music majors Yoon Yi Jennifer Cho, Suzy Hae Kim and Ellen Tian; and sophomore music major Lindsay Parsons. The graduate student pianists are Cody Smith, David Zedaker and Chunxing Angela Zhou — all pursuing a master of music in performance degree. Also in the group is alumna Jessica Cheng (B.A. music ’11), who is a University Extended Education student.
They debuted as a performance group April 12 before an appreciative audience of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.
