PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Matthew Bengtson, 215-704-4600;
www.mattbengtson.com
Publicist, Trish Doll, Publicity Works, 717-445-6377

Acclaimed Pianist/Chess Master to Solo with Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra

PHILADELPHIA, Pa., (January 31, 2003) -- Acclaimed pianist, music theorist, fortepianist and harpsichordist Matthew Bengtson will perform Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with the Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra on Saturday, February 8, 2003 at Ridgefield High School in Ridgefield, CT. Performance time is 8 p.m. Tickets and information: Contact 203-438-3889 or symphony@ridgefield-ct.com.

Upcoming recital appearances by Mr. Bengtson include the Settlement Music School in Philadelphia and Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. 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. For a CD, call Matthew Bengtson, 215-704-4600.


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