November 9, 2005 Source: Laurentian University of Sudbury:
http://www.laurentian.ca/?file=newsrelease/2005/nov/nov9_5penny_e.php Yoko Hirota and piano music of Arnold Schoenberg to be featured in 5-Penny New Music Concerts This year marks the third season of the 5-Penny New Music Concerts. The first concert of the series, to take place on Friday, November 18, at 8 p.m., at St. Peter's United Church, 203 York Street, in Sudbury, will feature Dr. Yoko Hirota, music professor at Laurentian University. She will present a recital of piano music by the Viennese composer, Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1952). The occasion will also be the launch for Hirota's first CD, entitled "Schoenberg Piano Music and His 17 Fragments." Admission is $15 for adults and $10 for students and seniors. Tickets are available at the door or at the Black Cat Too! A pre-concert talk on "Viennese Expressionism and Schoenberg" will also be presented at 7 p.m. by Dr. Lucien Pelletier, professor of philosophy at the University of Sudbury. His presentation will focus mainly on expressionist art from Schoenberg's Vienna. Dr. Lucien Pelletier will use examples from the visual arts to illustrate the expressionist formal and spiritual search, since it provides the immediate context for Schoenberg's musical innovations. In addition to his published piano repertoire, Schoenberg left 17 fragments or experimental unfinished pieces. Collectively they are highly significant to his artistic development. Besides the 17 fragments, Dr. Hirota's program will include piano pieces from Schoenberg's opus 11, 23 and 33. In the course of preparing her recording, Dr. Yoko Hirota, a music professor at Laurentian University, conducted research at the Arnold Schoenberg Archive in Vienna in 2002. She also studied with the noted German pianist and Schoenberg specialist, Herbert Henck. Yoko Hirota is the first pianist to record the 17 fragments in Canada . The father of 12-tone music (atonality), Schoenberg was one of the most imaginative, controversial and influential composers of the 20th century. He was strongly influenced by expressionism, an artistic movement that first appeared in Germany and Austria around 1910. The expressionist revolt attracted a rising generation of young artists who felt excluded from bourgeois culture and denounced its hypocritical concealment of social malaise behind a veil of beauty and harmony. The Expressionists created strikingly provocative works of art, first in painting but also in literature, theater, cinema and music. Such works manifested their anguish, despair and longing. The Expressionists' multi-faceted art was enormously influential and paved the way for many of the major trends of 20th-century art. For more information, please contact Dr. Robert Lemay, music professor at Laurentian University, at (705) 523-4167 or rlemay@laurentian.ca. Reference:
Paul de la Riva
Public Affairs
Laurentian University
Sudbury, Ontario
(705) 675-1151, ext. 3406
pdelariva@laurentian.ca
www.laurentian.ca
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