67.0°,
Mostly Cloudy Biegel, Bolcom and Beethoven
Lynbrook pianist to perform with Detroit Symphony Orchestra; event to be streamed live on the Internet Saturday night
Lynbrook resident and world-renowned pianist Jeffrey Biegel, 50, will bring the music of Beethoven and Bolcom into countless homes on Saturday via a webcast from the Motor City with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra at the Max Fisher Music Center and Orchestra Hall.
Leonard Slatkin will conduct Dvorak’s love letter to America, the “New World” Symphony, and Biegel will be the soloist in two works: Beethoven’s a monumental “Choral Fantasy,” a predecessor to his later choral-orchestral masterpiece, the Ninth Symphony — and the Detroit premiere of William Bolcom’s “Prometheus.”
Biegel first performed in a global Internet recital in 1997, broadcast from New York.
“The whole idea was to get concerts webcast on a broad basis,” said Biegel. “It’s wonderful to be able to bring this into peoples homes … many people who are not able to get to a concert.”
The webcast would be the second of a two-night performance at the concert hall for Biegel. “The technology is better now [but] you want to test the limits. This will bring our craft closer to those around the world.”
In Bolcom’s “Prometheus,” he equates the dangers of fire handed down from the God of Fire to mortals, to technology today, which in the wrong hands, he said, can prove extremely dangerous. “Bolcom is one of the most respected and performed composers of our time,” said Biegel. “In writing this work for me, commissioned by nine orchestras and chorus, he admits that this is the first time he composed a work for an artist whose playing he had never heard.”
Biegel has other projects in the works, including the release of a CD and a world premiere set for 2013 to honor veterans returning home from war. For more information, visit www.jeffreybiegel.com
