Faculty Recital: Paul Berkowitz, piano

Join us for an evening of classical piano with UC Santa Barbara Music Faculty Paul Berkowitz at the Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall, UCSB, on Friday, February 14, 2025, at 7:30 pm.

Faculty pianist Paul Berkowitz presents a program of contrasts with performances of works by late Mozart and early Schumann in Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall. Opening with a pair of little-known short pieces by Mozart – the Sonatensatz in G minor that was left incomplete by the composer and the quirky Gigue in G major – he continues with the meditative Adagio in B minor, and concludes the Mozart half of the program with the sublime and expansive Sonata in F major K533/494. Mr. Berkowitz will then perform the Fantasie, op. 17 of Robert Schumann, perhaps his greatest work for piano, a masterpiece of early Romantic music, originally inspired by Beethoven but eventually becoming what Schumann called, in a letter to his future wife Clara “probably the most passionate I have ever written – a deep lamentation for you”.

Paul Berkowitz has recorded the complete Piano Sonatas of Schubert for Meridian Records to worldwide acclaim. He was described by the London Sunday Times as being “in the royal class of Schubert interpreters” and his Compact Disc recordings of the Last Three Schubert Piano Sonatas were included among the same newspaper’s Records of the Year. His recording of Schumann’s Kreisleriana was selected by BBC Radio Record Review as the best of all available recordings. He also released a series of three CD recordings of Brahms Piano Music. BBC Music Magazine reviewed Vol. II commenting, “…praise to Meridian, which has in the Canadian pianist Paul Berkowitz an artist who isn’t shy of taking on the kind of repertoire traditionally the preserve of more internationally high-profile artists. Rightly so, for he has a voice, a musicality, a bigness of pianism distinctively his own…his integrity is commanding, his stylistic authority convincing and his refusal merely to play the notes impressive.”

Mr. Berkowitz recorded the Schubert Impromptus, Moments Musicaux and other repertoire as the final two volumes, released in 2017, of his 9-CD cycle of major works for piano by Schubert for Meridian which he began in 1984. The Guardian of London noted: “A sparkling technique allied to a clear sense of line make these recordings particularly special.” All earlier volumes have been re-issued along with the two new recordings as Schubert Piano Works, in nine volumes. More recently he has taken an interest in the piano works of the 20th-century French composer Francis Poulenc, with a new Meridian CD of Poulenc piano music just released in December 2024. His next project for Meridian will be a second volume of major works by Schumann, currently in preparation.

Mr. Berkowitz, a native of Montreal, Canada, is a graduate of McGill University and of the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Rudolf Serkin. He lived in Britain for 20 years appearing frequently at the Queen Elizabeth and Wigmore Halls and on the BBC, as a soloist with major orchestras in Britain and Canada and at music festivals in Belgium, Denmark, England, Scotland, France, Italy and Spain. Mr. Berkowitz left the Guildhall School of Music in London, where he had been a professor since 1975, to join the music faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1993, where he is Professor of Piano, and served as Chair of the Department of Music 2007-12. He has been invited to present master classes at major conservatories, universities and festivals, and his students have won prizes in numerous competitions, including the BBC Young Musician of the Year (Thomas Adès), the International Piano Competition Palma d’Oro in Italy, the Bradshaw and Buono International Competition in New York, and the Los Angeles Liszt Competition, and have gone on to have concert and academic careers of their own in Europe, North America and Asia.