Free concert presented by the Washington Conservatory of Music. Haskell Small will perform the complete Musica Callada,
by Catalan Spanish composer Federico Mompou. This delicate
set of 28 miniatures was composed between 1959 and 1967. Rarely
performed, the work carries the listener through a serene musical journey in
quietude peppered with moments of explosive contrast. The title of this set
of pieces refers to a poem by the Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross,
who expressed the idea of music as the voice of silence. While touring the US,
Small will perform this work in diverse venues including monasteries, churches
and other sites conducive to a contemplative experience.
Hailed by England’s Musical Times for his “dazzlingly prodigious
technique,” Small has concertized with great success in
major European capitals, South America, Japan and China, and has been
enthusiastically received by American audiences in such venues as Carnegie
Hall, the Kennedy Center, and the Spoleto Festival. He recently
articipated in an American Music Festival in Iceland. A
prize winner in the Johann Sebastian Bach International Piano Competition,
Small has received numerous
awards
and has been featured in the nationally broadcast PBS special, “A Celebration
of the Piano.”
Following
in the tradition of 18th- and 19th-century pianist/composers, Small is also an accomplished
composer, who often performs his own works. In 2005, Small completed Renoir’s
Feast, a commission by the Phillips Collection to celebrate the return of
their beloved painting, Luncheon of the Boating Party. His The
Rothko Room: Journeys in Silence received its world premiere at the Phillips Collection in 2011.
Small
has recorded a number of CDs, among them Mompou's Musica Callada (declared “A Golden Silence” by the Washington Post), a Gershwin disc, a children’s CD with narrator Robert Aubry Davis, and Bach’s Goldberg
Variations.
Small
received his musical training at the San Francisco Conservatory and Carnegie-Mellon University, and has studied piano with Leon Fleisher, William Masselos, Harry Franklin, and Jeanne Behrend, and composition with Roland Leich
and Vincent Persichetti. A Washington DC native, he is Chair of the Piano Department at the Washington Conservatory of Music.
