Events

PRESENTED BY THE ESBENSHADE SERIES OF MARIETTA COLLEGE

“Music to Love” with pianist Barbara Nissman is scheduled for 8:00 p.m., Thursday, March 14, at Peoples Bank Theatre as part of Marietta College’s Esbenshade Series. Tickets for Nissman’s performance can be reserved starting at 10:00 a.m., Monday, February 26. This will be an evening of great music and an informal chat as Nissman shares the music and stories of some of her favorite composers.

Hailed as “one of the last pianists in the grand Romantic tradition of Liszt, Rachmaninoff, and Rubinstein,” Nissman continues the grand bravura tradition of romantic pianism. Recognized as an authority on the music of Franz Liszt, her 2 DVD set, Franz Liszt: Portrait of the Man & his Masterwork- The Sonata in B minor with Michael York as the voice of Liszt and a stellar cast of his contemporaries has recently been released. Her recordings of Prokofiev, Bartók, and Ginastera are considered “definitive,” and she has garnered praise for her series of recordings of nineteenth-century composers: Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Schumann, Brahms, and also Rachmaninoff. All these recordings are now available on Nissman’s new label, Three Oranges Recordings.

Nissman’s international career was personally launched by Eugene Ormandy, who had previously engaged her as a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra. She has performed with the leading orchestras of Europe and America. She has also worked with some of the major conductors of our time, including Ormandy, Riccardo Muti, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, and Leonard Slatkin. Nissman was inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame’s class of 2023.

The series, funded by the Frederica G. Esbenshade Memorial Fund, will once again feature five performances and all will be free of charge to the public.