Pianist

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 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.

Leon Fleisher drolly dubs the program "duets for pets" — a concert to benefit Baltimore Animal and Rescue Care Shelter Inc. The celebrated pianist will be joined by his wife, Katherine Jacobson, an accomplished keyboard artist in her own right, for the June 4 fundraiser at the Peabody Institute. Both are on the faculty there, Fleisher for more than 50 years. The two musicians are longtime supporters of BARCS. "We're very impressed with the staff and their deep commitment to giving animals a chance at a new lease on life," Jacobson says.

Unable to raise the needed funds to present the announced premiere of D.L. Coburn's "Return to Bluefin," the Bay Theatre instead is presenting "Souvenir," an amusing play with a two-person cast and a piano that fits Bay's intimate space and restricted budget. Steven Temperley's memory play debuted in New York in 2005 and chronicles the amazing heights scaled by supremely confident tone-deaf diva Florence Foster Jenkins, who rose to cult fame that culminated in a 1944 sold-out Carnegie Hall appearance at age 76. Her accompanist for 12 years was Cosme McMoon, who recalls his experiences 20 years after Jenkins' death.

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.

When Alfred Brendel, the revered Austrian pianist, gave his farewell performance in Vienna in 2008 after 60 years before the public, it was certainly the end of an era. But it may also have marked the beginning of one, since a likely heir to Brendel's artistic legacy is already here: Till Fellner. The 37-year-old Fellner, slated to make his Baltimore debut Saturday, is also Austrian. He studied with Brendel and, like that seasoned artist, devotes most of his attention to the likes of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann.