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PRESS RELEASEFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Acclaimed Pianist/Chess Master to Appear in Concert at Cornell University PHILADELPHIA, Pa. (February 12, 2003) - - Acclaimed pianist, music theorist, fortepianist and harpsichordist Matthew Bengtson will present an all-Szymanowski program on Sunday afternoon, February 16, 2003 at Cornell University, Barnes Hall, in Ithaca, NY. Performance time is 3 p.m. The program includes music for both solo piano and piano with violin. Mr. Bengtson will be joined by violinist Blanka Bednarz, a member of the Dickinson College Faculty. Admission is free. Call 607-255-4760 for more information. Recent appearances by Mr. Bengtson have included a performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 with the Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra and a recital at the Settlement School in Philadelphia. In late February and early March he and Ms. Bednarz will make a concert tour of Kansas performing the music of Szymanowski. A busy performer, he made his third recital appearance last December in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall. He is a champion of rarely-performed music. He read a paper entitled “The Mazurkas of Karol Szymanowski” as a Lowens Award finalist at the Capital Chapter of The American Musicological Society. In 2002 he recorded commercially all of Szymanowski’s mazurkas on compact disc. A winner of numerous international and national piano awards and fellowships, Mr. Bengtson won the 2000 Otto R. Stahl Memorial Prize at Cornell University and was a Timothy Faron Award and Braverman Grant recipient at Harvard University. After graduating from Harvard, he attended Peabody Institute in Baltimore, MD where he earned his masters and doctoral degrees in piano performance and minored in harpsichord. Last summer he attended the École Américaine at Fontainebleau, where he studied a variety of French piano and chamber music and was awarded the Prix de la Ville de Fontainebleau for piano performance. Mr. Bengtson serves on the faculty of Settlement Music School in Philadelphia and the piano staff of the Curtis Institute of Music. He takes time out from a demanding schedule by competing in chess and golf. A FIDE master (FM) and National Master (NM), he competes internationally with some of the world's finest chess masters and last summer won the Midland Open in England. He has also won several amateur golf tournaments and has a 3 handicap. to send e-mail to Matthew Bengtson. Copyright
2002-2003 Matthew Bengtson |