Courtesy umass.edu

Courtesy umass.edu

Professors Astrid Schween and Nadine Shank will be performing in the Faculty-Cello Recital at the Bezanson Recital Hall, located in the east side of the Fine Arts Center, Tuesday, Feb. 26 at 8 p.m.

Schween will play cello while Shank performs on piano. The collaboration’s repertoire will include Sonata, Op. 40 by Dmitry Shostakovich and Sonata, Op. 5, No. 2 in G Minor by Beethoven, along with other surprise pieces.

Marilyn Kushick, the director of publicity and fundraising for the music and dance department of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, believes this performance by “very strong, talented artists with the finest credentials” will be a crowd-pleasing event. Both musicians have been thoughtful about how to design their recital in order to make it interesting to the audience, which will include their students. Kushick noted that the artists purposely chose one contemporary artist, Shostakovich, and one more classical artist, Beethoven. Kushick also said both of the main pieces are considered to be “important and major works of the cello-piano repertoire.”

Since they were young, both women have been trained extensively in music by prestigious instructors. Their talents have led them to perform and travel around the world. Both colleagues have performed together in the past.

Appointed in 1980, Shank currently teaches piano and is the director of the Collaborative Piano Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is also an orchestral pianist with the Springfield Symphony Orchestra. She attended the Oberlin Conservatory and Indiana University. She has performed in both solo and chamber performances in England, Germany, and Holland and is featured in such recordings as “Nadine Shank Performs Sonata 2,” by Yusef Lateef, “American Jewish Art Songs,” a CD with the West Point Military Band, and various “Play-Along” CDs.

Schween has been a visiting assistant professor of cello at UMass since 2004. She has been a member of the Lark String Quartet, which is in-residence in Amherst, since 1989. She is a graduate from the Julliard School and has performed in such regions as Europe, Australia, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand and Japan. She has also performed at Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, Lincoln Center, and the Beethoven Festival in Moscow.

Sonata, Op. 40 was written by Shostakovich especially for both cello and piano in the late 1950s. He was a Russian composer during the Soviet period. Beethoven wrote Sonata, Op. 5 and No. 2 in G Minor in 1796 in Berlin when he was visiting King of Prussia Friedrich Wilhelm II, therefore dedicating it to him.

Tickets, available at the Fine Arts Center Box Office, are $3 for UMass students, senior citizens and other students, $5 for children under 18 and $10 for the general public. The event is expected to last one hour, 45 minutes.

Carol Lawless can be reached at [email protected].