Irish pianist to give Nitschke Memorial Concert

BOWLING GREEN, O.—Award-winning pianist Barry Douglas will perform the Lois M. Nitschke Memorial Concert as part of the 2009-10 Festival Series at Bowling Green State University.

The concert will be held at 8 p.m. Jan. 26 in Kobacker Hall at the Moore Musical Arts Center. Douglas will perform works from the Romantic period, including selections from Tchaikovsky’s “The Seasons,” selections from Rachmaninoff’s “Moments Musicaux,” and Schumann’s “Sonata No. 1 in F-sharp Minor.” The second half of the performance will feature Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.”

Douglas enjoys a successful solo career, which has flourished since he won the Gold Medal at the 1986 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow. Adding to the prestige of this award, he is the only non-Russian since Van Cliburn to have won this award outright.

Though renowned for his performances of the large-scale romantic works by composers such as Brahms, Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky, Douglas is also well versed in 20th- and 21st-century compositions.

Among his numerous awards, he received the Order of the British Empire in the 2002 New Year’s Honors List for his service to music. He also was granted a Fellowship by the Royal College of Music, London, where he is Prince Consort Professor of Piano. He holds numerous honorary doctorates of music from such universities as Queens University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the National University of Ireland at Maynooth and the University of Wyoming in the United States.

A recording artist on the Sony/BMG label, Douglas recently released the complete Beethoven Piano Concertos, which he recorded with Camerata Ireland, a chamber orchestra of Irish musicians he founded in 1999.

Adult tickets to his BGSU performance are $36, $28 and $20. Student tickets are priced at $29, $22 and $15. Call the box office weekdays from noon-6 p.m. at 1-800-589-2224 or 419-372-8171, or email musictickets@bgsu.edu.

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(Posted January 15, 2010 )