Guest Artists, April 4, 2009
Virginia Eskin, piano
Virginia Eskin's concerto appearances include the Annapolis, Buffalo, Louisville, New Hampshire, Rochester, San Francisco, Santa Barbara and Utah Symphony Orchestras, the Boston Classical, the Israel Sinfonietta, and the Boston Pops. She has also performed as a soloist with the New York City and Boston Ballet Companies, and at New York 's Morgan Library in New York.
Her concerto repertoire includes Rachmaninoff, Second Piano Concerto, Shostakovitch Concerto No. 1, Amy Beach Piano Concerto, and Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466, all of which she has performed recently. During 2005-06 she performed MacDowell's Concerto in D minor in Athens with the National Orchestra of Greece, Beethoven's 3rd Concerto with Symphony by the Sea (MA), and Clara Schumann's piano concerto with the Atlanta (GA) Chamber Symphony. She continues to give recitals throughout the United States, including the Athenaeum in La Jolla and Sonoma (CA), Monadnock Music (NH), Mohonk Music (NY), and the Atherton Theatre in Honolulu.
In 2007, in recognition of the 100th anniversary of Edward MacDowell's death, Ms. Eskin will perform his 2nd Piano Concerto with the New Hampshire Philharmonic and with Boston 's Civic Symphony at Jordon Hall. She will also feature MacDowell in a series of "informances" at Boston University 's Evergreen Series and at a New England Conservatory piano seminar. She joins the Portland String Quartet for a Mothers' Day program at the Claremont (NH) Opera House, and returns this summer to Monadnock Music and the Rockport (MA) Music Festival.
Eskin's many recordings include works by American composers Amy Beach, Arthur Foote, Rebecca Clark and George Chadwick. With the Hawthorne Quartet she recorded Chamber Music From Theresienstadt (Channel Classics), Music of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (Koch), and Silenced Voices (Northeastern). She recorded Dvorak's Piano Quintet with the Portland String Quartet (Arabesque). Her "Ragtime Project" includes Fluffy-Ruffle Girls (Koch 1999), American Beauties: The Rags of Joseph Lamb (Koch 2000 re-release), and Spring Beauties (Koch 1998). She has also recorded Mrs. H.H.A. Beach (Koch), works by Marion Bauer and Ruth Crawford (Albany), and previously unrecorded works by Marion Bauer (Albany). In 2008 Koch will release her premiere recording of works by Czech composer Vítezslava Kaprálová.
Ms. Eskin recently created and hosted "First Ladies of Music," a 13-program radio series sponsored by Northeastern University and produced by WFMT, Chicago, carried by over 100 radio stations in the United States and abroad. She holds the appointment of Visiting Artist, Northeastern University Department of Music, and received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Keene State College (NH) to recognize her contributions to women's music.