Forte/Piano Summer Academy returns to Cornell

The Forte/Piano Summer Academy will return to Cornell July 30-Aug. 3 after two years away.

Hosted by the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards (CCHK) in conjunction with the Chamber Music Collective (CMC), the collaboration will combine CMC’s international experts in the history and performance of eighteenth- and nineteenth- century music with the  CCHK collection’s representative instruments. The week will culminate with a series of concerts, presentations and roundtable discussions featuring distinguished performing artists, teachers and “rising stars,” the organizers announced.

Young artists were selected from a competitive application process to participate in an immersion experience with the Cornell keyboards, one of the world’s most significant collections of performance-ready historical pianos. The musicians include pianists, violinists, cellists and vocalists, and hail from locations as far flung as Germany, Italy and California, as well as New York.

Participants will explore the world of chamber music using historical technologies and techniques, working closely with academy faculty members Roger Moseley, associate professor of music (keyboards) and Jean Bernard Cerin, assistant professor of music (voice), both in the College of Arts and Sciences; Sezi Seskir (Bucknell, keyboards); Christine Brandes (University of California, Berkeley (voice); Keiran Campbell (Tafelmusik, cello); Lucy Russell (Royal College of Music, violin); and Timothy Pyper (Williams College, Alexander Technique).

“The main goal of the collaboration is for our students to get to know the expansive collection of instruments intimately in order to interact with the works and improvisatory practices we have assigned them in a new and meaningful way,” said Seskir, CMC co-founder.

The mission for the tuition-free program is for students and faculty to foster a collective learning environment resulting in collaborative performances. The concerts will include a variety of composers such as Joseph Bologne (Chevalier de Saint-Georges), Schubert, Brahms, Debussy, Emilie Mayer and Louise Farrenc, on an equally large range of instruments, from a five-octave Walter copy to original nineteenth-century Graf, Blüthner and Pleyel pianos.

The CCHK will also present two showcase concerts from Tom Beghin (Senior Researcher at the Orpheus Institute for Advanced Studies & Research in Music) and Tuija Hakkila (piano faculty at the Sibelius Academy) to preview next summer’s Forte/Piano 2025, a major international festival featuring musical artists, scholars, and technicians who play and work with a plethora of pianos, from Steins to Steinways and Broadwoods to Blüthners.

The recital schedule is below; for more information about Forte/Piano Summer Academy events that are free and open to the public, visit the academy webpage.

In addition to the performance academy, the CCHK will host an intensive two-day academy for piano technicians to learn specialized skills for working with historical instruments. Led by restorer-technicians Ken Eschete and Ken Walkup, participants will learn conservation principles, restoration, period action regulation, and more. Eschete is a Professional Associate in the American Institute for Conservation and has worked with the Smithsonian and Colonial Williamsburg. Walkup retired as Cornell’s piano technician and continues to offer his expertise to maintain the CCHK’s unique historical instruments.

Recital schedule

Tuesday, July 30
Forte/Piano Summer Academy 
Chamber Music Collective Faculty Concert (performers and repertoire TBA)
7:30 pm
Barnes Hall
 
Thursday, August 1
Forte/Piano Summer Academy 
Chamber Music Collective Faculty & Student Concert (performers and repertoire TBA)
7:30 pm
Barnes Hall
 
Friday, August 2
Forte/Piano Summer Academy 
Chamber Music Collective Gala Concert (performers and repertoire TBA)
4 pm
Barnes Hall
 
Friday, August 2
Forte/Piano Summer Academy 
Showcase Salon Concert – Tom Beghin performs sonatas with varied reprises by C. P. E. Bach and W.A. Mozart on clavichord and fortepiano
8 pm
A.D. White House
 
Saturday, August 3
Forte/Piano Summer Academy 
Showcase Concert – Tuija Hakkila gives a recital including Schumann’s Kinderszenen, Schubert’s Six Sentimental Waltzes and Sonata in C Minor, and works by Beethoven, Chopin, and Hélène de Montgéroult
8 pm
Schwartz Center, Kiplinger Theater