For Immediate Release Contact: Barbara Jester May 4, 2009 212.998.6844 barbara.jester@nyu.edu
On March 11, 1911, composer Enric Granados premiered Cant de les Estrelles, a work for piano solo, organ, and three choirs, at the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona. A second performance of the piece did not take place until March 22, 2007, when Douglas Riva, musicologist and pianist, performed the piece with Dennis Keene’s Voice of Ascension chorus at the Church of the Ascension in New York.
New York University’s Catalan Center will host a special event on Thursday, May 21, at 6:30 p.m. celebrating the upcoming June release by Naxos of “Song of the Stars-A Celebration of Catalan Music,” the recording of that historic second concert and other Catalan music. Riva, who is not only one of Granados’s major interpreters on the piano but also a distinguished Granados scholar, will be the featured guest speaker. He will be joined by Keene, artistic director of the Voices of Ascension chorus and conductor of the concert. The event takes place at NYU’s King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, 53 Washington Square South, and is free and open to the public. For further information, call 212.998.8255.
Riva will discuss how he helped track down the long-lost score of the Song and the many vicissitudes that kept it from being played: the Spanish Civil War, bad blood in the Granados family, fire, flood, and more. The audience will have the opportunity to hear the new CD, which also contains world premiere recordings of works by Enric Morera, Manuel Blancafort, and Manuel Oltra.