Pianist

If Ivo Pogorelich did to any of the masterpieces in the National Gallery what he did to works of Scarlatti, Brahms and Liszt at the Kennedy Center last night, he'd be in jail this morning.The Croatian pianist, now 35, has been atop the classical music world for more than a decade. An index of his success is that he sold out the Kennedy Center's huge concert hall. He is a pianist with almost infallible fingers, an enormous (and often beautiful) sound and an uncanny ability to promote himself.

Celebrate the spirit as "Dancing Hearts" presents "Classical Rocks," Sunday, April 22 at 7 p.m. at Resurrection Church, 3315 Greencastle Road, in Burtonsville. Enjoy works such as Aaron Copland's evocative Duo, Scott Joplin's irresistible Rags and the soulful tango music of Astor Piazzolla. The program features flutist Karen Johnson, pianist Carlos-Cesar Rodriguez and percussionist John Kilkenny. Concert is part of the Living Arts Concert Series. A reception follows the concert.

Yefim Bronfman, 51, who was just awarded the $50,000 Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance from Northwestern University, has been among the finest virtuosos for more than 30 years. He plays a recital this weekend for the Shriver Hall Concert Series. Question: Your recital includes Tchaikovsky's Grand Sonata, which you recently learned. Why do you think it's so rarely heard? Answer: It was performed a lot in the '30s and '40s, but for some reason not much after the Second World War. I want to change that.

Born 200 years ago on Oct. 22, Franz Liszt changed music history. Even if the Hungarian-born pianist/composer had not done so, people would probably still remember him, if only for his romances. There was the dancer, Lola, who got so mad when Liszt tired of her that she followed him from city to city, finally crashing a banquet given in his honor and boogieing on a table in front of a startled crowd. And Olga, who, likewise faced with Liszt's waning affections, disguised herself as a gardener and burst into his villa ready to stab him. She settled for one more bout of lovemaking that night, but soon hounded him again, this time with a revolver and poison.

"I was in love with music from the beginning," said Virginia Reinecke, who first played the piano at 6 and will give a performance Sunday at the age of 90. Make that 901/2 — she hit the big Nine-O last July. The Baltimore-born, Peabody-trained Reinecke will be featured in a concert for Music in the Great Hall, the series she co-founded in 1974 and ran for its first 30 years. The series "had some bad times in the past, like any organization," she said, "but the board is stronger now and [artistic director]

Hungarian pianist Zoltan Kocsis has canceled his April 26-28 appearances with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and his entire North American tour in April and May because of "a virulent case of contact dermatitis," his agent said.The BSO said he will be replaced by 23-year-old South Korean pianist Ju Hee Suh in her debut here. She will play Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor. She scored a big hit at age 10 when she made her New York debut in 1979 playing Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 with Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic.

Pianist Cyrus Chestnut will perform through Sunday at the Maryland Inn's King of France Tavern.Other June performers are Charlie Byrd, June 10-12; Deanna Bogart, June 17-18; Bruno and Bollenback, June 19; and the Hard Travelers, June 24-26.Performances are 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 8:30 p.m. Sunday.Information: 263-2641.

Where talent is concerned, there are rarely any surprises in the music business. Two weeks ago when Ju Hee Suh was named by the Baltimore Symphony as a replacement for Zoltan Kocis in this week's performances of the Rachmaninoff Concerto No. 2, this listener suspected that she would give a performance that would bring the house down. Last night, of course, she did.Music insiders have been hearing reports for at least a decade about a fantastically talented young Korean-born pianist at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.

The American pianist Misha Dichter makes his first local appearance in several years this week when he performs Beethoven's First Piano Concerto in Meyerhoff Hall with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and guest conductor Marek Janowski. The program also includes Schumann's soaring Symphony No. 3 in E-flat (the "Rhenish").Performances take place Friday and Saturday at 8:15 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets are $18-$36 and are available by calling the BSO box office, (410) 783-8000.

Candlelight Concerts will present cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han in a performance of works by Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Rachmaninoff at 8 p.m. Saturday at Howard Community College's Smith Theatre in Columbia. Finckel and Han will play selections from their latest compact disc Russian Classics -- Sergei Prokofiev's Sonata for Cello and Piano, Op. 119; Dmitri Shostakovich's Sonata in D minor for Cello and Piano, Op. 40; and Sonata for Cello and Piano in G minor, Op. 19, by Sergei Vassilyevich Rachmaninoff.

The penultimate program of the Baltimore Symphony's season balances feel-good orchestral pieces by Osvaldo Golijov and Benjamin Britten against a piano concerto by Johannes Brahms packed with darkly emotional drama. It makes for an engrossing combination. The orchestra-only portion includes the local premiere of "Sidereus" by Golijov, the Argentine composer with Russian-Jewish roots and a knack for writing music of uncommonly broad appeal. The BSO was among nearly three dozen orchestras involved in commissioning the work, first performed in Memphis, Tenn., last fall.

"I was in love with music from the beginning," said Virginia Reinecke, who first played the piano at 6 and will give a performance Sunday at the age of 90. Make that 901/2 — she hit the big Nine-O last July. The Baltimore-born, Peabody-trained Reinecke will be featured in a concert for Music in the Great Hall, the series she co-founded in 1974 and ran for its first 30 years. The series "had some bad times in the past, like any organization," she said, "but the board is stronger now and [artistic director]

When Sara Bareilles' new album was released, it surprised many by heading straight to the top of the charts. It was a shock not just because it was just Bareilles' second album, coming off 2007's "Little Voice," but also because of the kind of music she makes. At a time when dance-infused hip-hop is dominating the Billboard charts, here was a 13-track album of upbeat, traditional pop nestled at No. 1, with 90,000 units sold, according to Nielsen Soundscan. "There's a lot of stuff out there that's dance and club-oriented," Bareilles said.

It's been 40 years since Elton John first performed in Baltimore, and a decade since he performed in the city proper. On Saturday, he'll return with a show at 1st Mariner Arena , where he'll play some of his greatest hits. But the show will also find John rejuvenated in ways he hasn't been on previous tours, even with Billy Joel in Washington two years ago. That's because he'll play selections from his new album, "The Union," where he exhibits the kind of swagger that brought him prominence and a legion of American fans in his first stateside tours in the 1970s.

Google "viola jokes" and you'll never run out of material (How do you keep your violin from getting stolen? Put it in a viola case.) But hear a good violist, and the jokes fade instantly. The instrument, with its dusky timbre, has a soulful quality that has attracted many great composers, including those featured on a new CD, "Inner Voice," by longtime Baltimore Symphony Orchestra member Peter Minkler. On this Centaur Records release, beautifully accompanied by pianist Lura Johnson, he offers absorbing, incisive accounts of richly expressive works by Britten, Shostakovich, Arvo Part and the late George Rochberg.

Jonathan Biss, the young pianist who makes his Carnegie Hall recital debut on Friday and will repeat the program at the slightly more modest Shriver Hall on Sunday, could easily have become a violinist. But as he tells it on the bio page of his website, "the highlight of his career as a violinist took place when he was a fetus. " A few months before his birth in Indiana in 1980, Biss writes, "he performed, prenatally, the Mozart A major Violin Concerto at Carnegie Hall, with the Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of Lorin Maazel.

The piano is really a huge percussion box in which sounds are made by hammers striking steel strung under thousands of pounds of pressure. Beautiful sounds should not be able to come out of such an instrument, and, in fact, they rarely do -- even when played by some very famous pianists.In terms of popular acclaim, Nelson Freire is not a very famous pianist. But last night the Brazilian-born artist made some of the most beautiful sounds this listener has ever heard come out of a piano.With the Baltimore Symphony and guest conductor James DePreist, Freire gave an extraordinarily poetic and personal performance of the beloved Schumann Concerto.

CHAMBER music can be an occasion for relaxation -- both for players and listeners -- but Beethoven's Sonata in C Minor for Violin and Piano should leave players and listeners as exhilarated and as wiped out as 30 minutes on a dance floor. It's nice to report that the performance of violinist Maria Bachmann and pianist Jon Klibonoff Saturday night in the Shriver Hall series had exactly that effect.From the opening measures of the piece, with its ominous and foreboding beginning, one knew that he was in the presence of first-class artists.

The boy was 11, already well along in his process of discovering music, when he found himself alone at home one day, listening to a piece by one of history's great romantics. He couldn't explain it, but something in the sounds of Frederic Chopin's Ballade No. 1 in G Minor, Opus 23 — as played by Polish musician Witold Malcuzynsky — struck Brian Ganz like a bolt from stormy skies. "It was mysterious, sort of soulful, and I actually, literally, doubled over in pain," says Ganz, an internationally celebrated concert pianist who lives in Annapolis.

Brian Ganz is preparing to climb a musical Mt. Everest. He wants to perform all 250 keyboard-based works of Frederic Chopin. He's in no hurry, though. "This will probably take the better part of a decade," he said. Ganz will give a preview of the venture Saturday in Annapolis. The Chopin project will then be launched with a recital next month at the Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda, where Ganz will eventually perform Chopin's piano/orchestra works with the National Philharmonic.