David Leisner - Cedar Park, Murray Road, Mickleover, Derby
Invited Return Performance Saturday March 7th., 2009 at 7:30 p.m.
David Leisner is an extraordinarily versatile musician with a multi-faceted career as an electrifying performing artist, a distinguished composer, and a master teacher. Regarded as one of the world's leading classical guitarists, his superb musicianship and provocative programming have been applauded by critics and audiences around the globe.
Mr. Leisner's career as a guitarist began auspiciously with top prizes in both the 1975 Toronto and 1981 Geneva International Guitar Competitions. In the 1980s, a disabling hand injury, focal dystonia, interrupted his performing career in mid-stream and plagued him for 12 years. Through a pioneering approach to technique based on his understanding of the physical aspects of playing the guitar, Leisner gradually rehabilitated himself. Completely recovered since 1996, he has once again resumed an active performing career, earning accolades wherever he plays.
David Leisner's recent seasons have taken him around the US, including his solo debut with the Atlanta Symphony, a major tour of Australia and New Zealand, and debuts and reappearances in Japan, the Philippines, Germany, Hungary, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Ireland, the U.K., Italy, Czech Republic, Greece, Puerto Rico and Mexico. An innovative three-concert series at Weill Recital Hall in Carnegie Hall, included the first all-Bach guitar recital in New York’s history. He has performed chamber music at the Santa Fe, Vail Valley, Rockport, Cape and Islands, Bargemusic, Bay Chamber and Angel Fire Festivals, with Eugenia Zukerman, Kurt Ollmann, Lucy Shelton, Ida Kavafian, the St. Lawrence and Vermeer Quartets and many others. Celebrated for expanding the guitar repertoire, David Leisner has premiered works by many important composers, including Virgil Thomson, Ned Rorem, Philip Glass, Richard Rodney Bennett, Peter Sculthorpe and Osvaldo Golijov.
A featured recording artist for Azica Records, Leisner has released 6 highly acclaimed solo CDs of music by Bach, Villa-Lobos, Mertz and Schubert, Contemporary composers, his own compositions, and Beethoven’s contemporary, Wenzeslaus Matiegka. A recent release is the Naxos recording of the Hovhaness Concerto with Gerard Schwarz and the Berlin Radio Orchestra. Other recent CDs include the Koch recording of Haydn Quartet in D with the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and Hovhaness Spirit of Trees for Telarc with harpist Yolanda Kondonassis. Mel Bay Co. recently released a solo concert DVD called Classics and Discoveries.
Mr. Leisner is himself a highly respected composer noted for the emotional and dramatic power of his music. His Dances in the Madhouse, in both its original version for violin and guitar and as an arrangement for orchestra, has received hundreds of performances. Recent commissioners include the baritone Wolfgang Holzmair, Arc Duo, Stones River Chamber Players (TN), Fairfield Orchestra (CT), Red Cedar Chamber Music (IA), and the Twentieth Century Unlimited Series (NM). Recordings of his works are currently available on the Sony Classical, ABC, Dorian, Azica, Cedille, Centaur, Town Hall, Signum, Acoustic Music, Athena and Barking Dog labels. The Cavatina Duo’s recording of his complete works for flute and guitar, Acrobats (Cedille) was recently released to exceptionally strong reviews. His compositions are published by Merion Music/Theodore Presser, AMP/G. Schirmer, Doberman-Yppan and Columbia Music.
David Leisner is currently co-chairman of the guitar department at the Manhattan School of Music and taught at the New England Conservatory for 22 years. Primarily self-taught as both guitarist and composer, he briefly studied guitar with John Duarte, David Starobin and Angelo Gilardino and composition with Richard Winslow, Virgil Thomson, Charles Turner and David Del Tredici.
Programme Saturday March 7th., 2009 at 7:30 p.m.
Three Preludes ............................................................ Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959)
No. 1 in E minor
No. 3 in A minor
No. 2 in E major
Labyrinths (2007) ........................................................ David Leisner (b. 1953)
Shimmer
Shadow
Shiver
Shatter
Shelter
Sonata
in B minor, Op. 31, No. 6 ...............................
Wenzeslaus Matiegka (1773-1830)
Allegro non molto
Scherzo: Allegro molto
Finale: Allegretto
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Interval
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Grand
Sonata ..............................................................
Niccolo Paganini
(1782-1840) (arr. D. Leisner)
Allegro
risoluto
Romanza
Andantino variato
Four
Pieces
.................................................................
Alexander Ivanov-Kramskoi (1912-1973)
Song without Words
Prelude
Improvisation
Gust
Programme Friday March 11th., 2005 at 8:00 p.m.
Grand Sonata No. 1 .................................................. Wenzeslaus Matiegka (1773-1830)
Maestoso
Andante molto
Rondo capriccioso
BWV 998 ................................................................... Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Prelude arr., D. Leisner
Fugue
Allegro
Sehnsucht .................................................................. Johann Kaspar Mertz (1806-1856)
(Op. 13, Vol. 10, No. 3)
Tarantelle
(Op. 13, Vol. 6, No. 1)
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Interval
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Nel Mezzo: Sonata (1998) ....................................... David Leisner (b. 1953)
Urto
Lamento
No!
Valsa-Chôro (1912) ................................................. Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959)
(from Suite Populaire Brésilienne)
The Chrysanthemum (1904) ................................... Scott Joplin (1868-1917)
Maple Leaf Rag (1899) arr., D. Leisner
Programme Saturday May 3rd., 2003 at 7:30 p.m.
Serenade (1952) ...................................................... Lou Harrison (1917-2003)
Quatre Pièces (ca. 1928) ......................................... Lennox Berkeley (1903-1989)
Moderato ma con brio
Andante con moto
Lento (Mouvement de Sarabande)
Allegro, energico
Freedom Fantasies (1992) ....................................... David Leisner (b. 1953)
"Go Down, Moses"
"Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child"
"Oh, Freedom"
Hungarian Fantasy, Op. 65, No. 1 .......................... Johann Kaspar Mertz (1806-1856)
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Interval
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Chaconne ................................................................. J. S. Bach (1685-1750)
(from Partita No. 2 in D minor for unaccompanied violin) arr., D. Leisner
Das Fischermädchen ............................................... Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Liebesbothschaft arr., J.K. Mertz (1845), ed., D. Leisner
Sonata, Op. 47 (1976) .............................................. Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983)
Esordio
Scherzo
Canto
Finale