The MTSU School of Music’s popular Keyboard Artist Series will welcome internationally acclaimed pianist Daria Rabotkina to the Wright Music Building Friday, Oct. 18, for a public concert featuring the works of Schubert and Beethoven as well as modern composers Griffes and Aurandt.
Rabotkina’s performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 18 in Hinton Hall inside the Wright Music Building, 1439 Faulkinberry Drive. A campus map is available at http://bit.ly/MTSUParkingMap.
Admission is $10 for adults and $5 for seniors. Children under 18 will be admitted free, as will MTSU students, staff and faculty with current IDs. Tickets, which will help fund the Keyboard Artist Series, will be available at the door.
The 2019-20 concert series, sponsored in part by the Steinway Piano Gallery of Nashville and now in its fifth season, features MTSU faculty and distinguished guest artists from around the world.
Rabotkina, winner of the 2007 Concert Artists Guild International Competition among many international contest prizes, has performed in festivals in her home nation of Russia and in Finland and Denmark as well as at the Rockport Chamber Music Festival, PianoSummer at New Paltz and the San Francisco International Piano Festival in the United States. She’s played with the San Francisco and New World Symphonies, Moscow State Symphony, Winnipeg Symphony, Hudson Philharmonic and the Charleston Symphony and presented recitals worldwide, including performances at the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall and the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory.
Born in Kazan, Russia, into a family of musicians, Rabotkina presented her first solo recital at age 10. She now holds a doctorate in musical arts from the Eastman School of Music and now is an assistant professor of piano at Texas State University in San Marcos. Passionate about early piano education and musical opportunities for young people, she founded the FunKey Piano Project at Texas State in 2018.
Her MTSU performance will include selections from Franz Schubert’s Moment Musicaux, D. 780; Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in C minor, Op. 111; The Fountain of Acquo Paola and Clouds from Charles Tomlinson Griffes’ Roman Sketches, Op. 7; and Paul Harvey Aurandt’s Sonata in B-flat minor.
“I am looking forward to hearing Rabotkina perform this program,” said Arunesh Nadgir, coordinator of keyboard studies at MTSU. “She always performs with great passion and dazzling virtuosity, and her program for this recital is very interesting and offers a wide variety of sound and color that the audience will surely enjoy.”
A preview of Rabotkina’s talent, captured during her performance of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Humoresque, Op. 10, at the 2017 Copenhagen Summer Festival, is available at https://youtu.be/uWM5LbZNeYE.
The Keyboard Artist Series season will continue Friday, Jan. 24, with a concert in Hinton Hall by Chih-Long Hu, the Sandra G. Powell Endowed Professor of Piano at the University of Tennessee School of Music, and a Friday, March 27, concert by Nadgir.
For more information on the Keyboard Artist Series at MTSU, visit http://www.mtsu.edu/music/keyboardseries.php. For details on other School of Music events, call 615-898-2493 or visit http://www.mtsumusic.com and click on the “Concert Calendar” link.
