Fred Plotkin
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The Road to Utopia:
The Creation and Legacy of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony
Wednesday, February 26, 2025, 10am
John and Jeanne Rowe Performance and Learning Center
Fred Plotkin, lecturer
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is a masterpiece, but it wasn’t easy for the composer to get the work across the finish line. In this program, we explore the piece and all that the composer had to endure to complete it.
Musical Paris in the Early 20th Century:
Gershwin, Ravel, Stravinsky and Others
Thursday, February 27, 2025, 10am
John and Jeanne Rowe Performance and Learning Center
Fred Plotkin, lecturer
How and why did Paris, the City of Light, become a musical capital, attracting foreigners like Gershwin, Prokofiev and Stravinsky while inspiring French musicians like Debussy and Ravel in the early 20th century? This exciting program explores how the Parisian culture brought the best and brightest together.
Top image: Maria Barbara Krafft (Austrian, 1764-1925). Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (detail), 1819. Oil on canvas, 33 x 26 1/8 in. Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna, Austria. Second image: Hugo Hagen. Ludwig van Beethoven - studied from the death mask [i.e. life mask], c. 1892. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.. Third image: Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), 1925. U.S. Public Domain.