Miri Yampolsky and Xak Bjerken
A husband-and-wife duo piano team from Cornell University will play a free concert open to the community at 7:00 p.m. on Saturday, September 16, 2017 in St. Mary’s Chapel at Chatham Hall. The concert is dedicated to the memory of Frances Hallam Hurt, local author, historian, and arts patron, and is sponsored by Chatham Hall. There will be a reception in the Tea Room of the library following the concert.
Xak Bjerken, professor of piano at Cornell, and Miri Yampsolsky, senior lecturer of chamber music at Cornell, will open the concert with the Mozart Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major, K. 448. They will also perform the Rachmaninoff Suite for Two Pianos No. 2, Op. 17, along with a variety of solo works that includes Scriabin’s Ninth Sonata and pieces from Brahms Op. 116.
The couple recently played the Rachmaninoff Suite for Two Pianos at The Voice of Music in the Upper Galilee Chamber Music Festival, Israel’s oldest chamber music festival. In the upcoming year, Yampolsky will perform in New York City and Berlin with cellist Zvi Plesser, and Guy Braunstein, former concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic. Bjerken will record and premiere concertos by Stephen Hartke and Jesse Jones at Oberlin College-Conservatory, as well as perform these pieces in Ithaca, Austin, Texas, and Los Angeles.
Bjerken, born and reared in Santa Barbara, California, and Yampolsky, born in Russia and reared in Israel, were students of Leon Fleisher at Peabody Conservatory. They are co-founders and artistic directors of Mayfest, the Cornell Department of Music’s annual festival of world-class chamber music, which celebrated its tenth anniversary this year. The couple has three children: Misha, who is in high school and plays the double bass and sings; Anna, who is in middle school and plays the piano and sings; and Maya, who is in kindergarten and studies dance.
The entire community is invited to attend.