I am currently teaching a musicology seminar at Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf, focusing on piano sonatas of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While the works are considered in their particular aesthetical and genre-historical contexts, the primary approach is analytic, and we are examining the various conceptions of musical form and cyclic construction as seen in the music.
The start of the semester has been auspicious, with student presentations on works by Franz Liszt and Joachim Raff, besides sonatas by Josef Rheinberger, Edvard Grieg, Ethel Smyth, and Felix Draeseke. As the journey continues, we will delve into music by Peter Tchaikovsky, Mykola Lysenko, Leoš Janáček, Cécile Chaminade, Alexander Scriabin, Zara Levina, Béla Bartók, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Viktor Ullmann, and others. Moreover, we will have two guest appearances by pianists Kyra Steckeweh and Severin von Eckardstein who will introduce and perform sonatas by Dora Pejačević and Nikolai Medtner. I am looking forward!
