Brian Dykstra to Present Piano Recital Sept. 17 at The College of Wooster

Brian Dykstra

WOOSTER, Ohio - Brian Dykstra, professor of music and chair of the department at The College of Wooster, will present a piano recital on Sunday, Sept. 17, in Gault Recital Hall of Scheide Music Center (525 E. University St.). The performance, which is free and open to the public, begins at 4 p.m.

The program will open with the 6 Movements musicaux by Franz Schubert and close with Dykstra's three most recent concert rags for piano solo: "A Rag for New Orleans, September 2005," "Let's Go Together," and "Greater Liberation Rag." He will also perform Chopin's Nocturne in C Minor and Etude in A Minor, Liszt's Concert Etude No. 3 in D Flat ("Un sospiro") and Concert Paraphrase on Verdi's Rigoletto, and Sofia Gubaidulina's Chaconne, composed in 1962.

Dykstra began preparation for this recital while on sabbatical last year. During that time, he also presented a program, titled "Rags and Classics," for 16 College of Wooster alumni groups from coast to coast, including Los Angeles and New York City.

Dykstra joined the faculty at Wooster in 1969. He received his B.S. in piano from the Juilliard School of Music in New York City and his M.Mus. and D.M.A. from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y. He also studied at the Mozarteum Academy in Salzburg, Austria, on a Fulbright grant, and has participated in three international piano competitions. In addition, he has presented many solo recitals at The College of Wooster and elsewhere, and his chamber music performances include appearances at the Purcell Room on London's South Bank and at Carnegie Recital Hall in New York City.

In the early 1970s, Dykstra adopted ragtime music as a specialty and has since given several hundred programs of this genre. He has composed 51 concert rags for piano and other instruments, some of which were commissioned by members of the Cleveland Orchestra. Fifteen of his compositions are on his CD Original Rags, and a 2004 Centaur CD, titled Brian Dykstra: Concert Rags and featuring pianist Noel Lester, received an "A" from Cleveland Plain Dealer music critic Donald Rosenberg.

Dykstra has also composed three concert rags for Wooster's flute instructor Katherine DeJongh, who has performed them at the Cleveland Institute of Music and elsewhere. His most recent concert rag, "The National Pastime" for clarinet and piano, was composed for Wooster's instructor of clarinet Hild Peersen and her husband, Kenneth Williams, who gave the premier last month in Atlanta at the annual ClarinetFest of the International Clarinet Association.

For more information about the recital, please call 330-263-2419.