Contact
Classics IV: Romantic Connections
April 25, 2026 @ 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
Johannes Müller Stosch, conductor
Mikhail Korzhev, piano
West Ottawa Performing Arts Center
Arturo Márquez Danzón No. 2 (Audience Choice 2026)
BONDS Montgomery Variations
MARX Romantic Piano Concerto
Mexican composer Arturo Márquezs Danzón No. 2 is one of the most frequently performed Latin American pieces in the orchestral canon today. It is based on the Cuban danzón. Márquez writes, Danzón 2 endeavors to get as close as possible to the dance, to its nostalgic melodies, to its wild rhythms, and although it violates its intimacy, its form and its harmonic language, it is a very personal way of paying my respects and expressing my emotions towards truly popular music.
After studying piano and composition with Florence Price in Chicago, Margaret Bonds composed her variations in the wake of the 1963 firebombing of Birmingham, Alabamas 16th Street Baptist Church. She describes them as a group of freestyle variations based on the Negro Spiritual theme; I want Jesus to Walk with Me. The treatment suggests the manner in which Bach constructed his partitas a bold statement of the theme, followed by variations of the theme. A profound lyricist and yearning optimist, Austrian composer Joseph Marx considered himself a musical poet of happiness. HSO Music Director Johannes Müller Stosch describes his 1919 Romantic Piano Concerto as the Austrian counterpart of Rachmaninoffs second piano concerto, with lush romantic melodies, harmonies, and plenty of technical fireworks for the soloist. The piece was resurrected and made popular by famed pianist Jorge Bolet, is a rarely performed gem melding orchestra with piano in a duet of energy and radiant lyricism.
Mikhail Korzzev is one of the few pianists of this generation who has the boldness, technique, and strength to take on Marxs Romantic Piano Concerto. He projects strength, atmosphere and the ability to tangle even the knottiest passages (International Record Review)