Arts Spotlight: Performing Arts Series

The sun is shining, trees are blooming and Paul Lewis is returning to Middlebury. This Friday, the Performing Arts Series offers a sell-out concert to bring the season and the school year to a triumphant finale. Lewis will be performing Beethoven’s last three sonatas with the characteristic mastery and power that has brought him back to the College every season for the last decade. Although fewer tickets remain than for either Riddim or Misterwives, the concert is thoughtfully spaced between the two. Join us in the Concert Hall of the Kevin P. Mahaney ’84 Center for the Arts at 8 p.m. for a breath of composure amidst the chaos of finals and a virtuosic display craftsmanship and emotion.

Sonatas 109, 110 and 111 demand more than technical mastery: they call for interpretative brilliance. These three pieces in particular offer supreme challenges to a pianist’s skill and imagination rarely found elsewhere. That Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Director of the Performing Arts Paul Nelson has entrusted Lewis with this burden is a professional compliment of the highest order. Then again, it seems only fitting that the pianist whom Nelson describes as “one of the happiest discoveries” of his career should be the one to return and honor our Performing Series Director’s final concert after 30 years of programming for the College.

Opuses 109, 110, and 111 signify the end of more than Beethoven’s sonatas. After 30 years, Paul Nelson, Director of the Performing Arts Series will be passing the baton. After this concert, Allison Coyne Carroll will succeed Nelson. Of all the incredible talent Nelson has brought to Middlebury, he chose Lewis to send him off. 12 years ago, it was Paul Nelson who brought now-internationally-acclaimed pianist Paul Lewis to Middlebury for his first concert in the United States.

Since then, Lewis has earned accolades worldwide, returning often to Middlebury for season after season of astonishing performances.

Though Nelson has brought decades of talent to this campus and Lewis tours all over the world, both hold a special appreciation for College. Lewis has become more than a visiting performer; he has become a member of the community.

Middlebury was one of the select few venues in the world to present Lewis’ complete Beethoven piano sonatas. The full cycle comprised eight concerts over three seasons from 2005-2007. This cycle, along with Lewis’ similarly lauded Schubert project, earned

Lewis unanimous critical and public acclaim worldwide, confirmed his reputation as one of the world’s foremost interpreters of the central European classical repertoire and cemented his place at Middlebury.

In fact, when the school needed a new piano in 2013, it was Lewis who helped select the new Steinway concert grand piano from Steinway’s Astoria, NY factory. He will play on that very same instrument this Friday.

This particular program has been in the works for three years.

“Paul Lewis has been a favorite pianist of mine and our series for a long time,” Nelson remarked. “Beethoven has been my most-loved composer – from the time I began to love any music at all. And there’s something quite splendid about the end of the last sonata… it whiles away into quiet, and that’s wonderful parting music.”

Lewis’s numerous awards have included the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Instrumentalist of the Year Award, two Edison Awards, three Gramophone Awards, the Diapason D’or de l’Annee, the Preis Der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, the Premio Internazionale Accademia Musicale Chigiana and the South Bank Show Classical Music Award. In the summer of 2010, Lewis became the first pianist in the history of the famed BBC Proms classical music festival to play all five Beethoven Piano Concertos in a single season. He is also a regular guest at prestigious festivals and venues including London’s Wigmore Hall and Royal Festival Hall, Alice Tully and Carnegie Hall in New York, the Konzerthaus in Vienna, the Theatre des Champs Elysées in Paris, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Oji Hall in Tokyo and the Sydney Opera House.

His multi-award winning discography for the Harmonia Mundi label includes the complete Beethoven piano sonatas, concertos, and the Diabelli Variations; Liszt’s B minor Sonata and other late works; Schubert’s major late piano works and three song cycles recorded with tenor Mark Padmore.

This concert is made possible with support from Performing Arts Series Society members Leif Magnusson ’69 and Charlotte Sibley ’68, in honor of Paul Nelson. Audience members are invited to stay after the concert for a reception given in tribute to his 30 years of leadership.

The concert by Paul Lewis will take place on Friday, May 8, at 8 p.m. in the MCA Concert Hall. Professor of Music Larry Hamberlin will offer a pre-concert lecture at 7:15 p.m. Tickets are $6 for students; 20 for faculty, staff, alumni, emeriti and other ID card holders; and $25 for the general public.

When this newspaper went to print, the concert was sold out — but there’s a second chance: come get on the in-person waiting list for any returned tickets by coming to the MCA box office at 7 p.m.