Steinway Piano Series

All Steinway Piano Series concerts are held in the theater at Pittsburgh CAPA on Sundays at 3:00 p.m.

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Joseph Kalichstein

September 12, 2010

in collaboration with the 
Adams Foundation

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Peter Takács

October 17, 2010

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Christine Kefferstan 
and the 
Sarasvati Trio

November 21, 2010

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Ann Schein

February 13, 2011




in collaboration with the
Adams Foundation

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Michael Gurt

March 20, 2011

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David Allen Wehr

April 17, 2011

David Allen Wehr 
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April 17, 2011

Program:
Haydn: Variations in F Minor
Copland:Variations (1930)
Beethoven: Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli, op. 120

David Allen Wehr holds the Jack W. Geltz Distinguished Piano Chair at Duquesne University's Mary Pappert School of Music. Since coming to Pittsburgh in 2001 as Duquesne's Hillman Chair (the university's first endowed professorship), Wehr "has greatly enriched the local concert scene" (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review) as Artistic Director of several successful concert series at the university: the complete Beethoven Sonata Cycle, Beethoven's Dynamic Duos (with violinist Charles Stegeman and PSO Principal Cellist Anne Martindale Williams), Brahms on the Bluff (a three-year cycle of the composer's complete chamber music), Musique on the Bluff (a two-year survey of French chamber music) and Bicentennials on the  Bluff (celebrating Chopin and Schumann).
 
Since winning the Gold Medal at the 1987 Santander International Piano Competition in Spain, Wehr has played over 1200 concerts in thirty countries in Europe, North and South America and New Zealand. He has been soloist with the London Symphony, Houston Symphony, National Symphony (at the Kennedy Center), the Chautauqua Symphony, New Zealand Symphony and all of the major Spanish and Latin American orchestras, with such eminent conductors as Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos, Jesus Lopez-Cobos, Gennadi Rozhdestvenski, Walter Weller, Franz-Paul Decker and Jane Glover. He has been heard in the world musical capitals of New York (Carnegie Hall, 92nd St. Y), London (Queen Elizabeth Hall, Barbican Centre, Wigmore Hall), Paris (Salle Gaveau) and Vienna (Musikverein), as well as touring the US and Canada 13 seasons for Community Concerts.
 
Wehr's discography with Connoisseur Society includes the complete Beethoven Sonata Cycle and releases by Liszt (Wagner transcriptions), Charles Tomlinson Griffes, Chopin (complete nocturnes), Debussy, Schubert, Schumann, Czerny, Delius, Mussorgsky, Rachmaninoff, Brahms, Gershwin and Joe Utterback. American Record Guide on the Beethoven Cycle: "These performances, with superb sonics and intelligent notes by the pianist, are truly for the ages. For the newcomer, I cannot imagine a better place to begin; and for those of us with many sets of Beethoven sonatas, I am comfortable suggest­ing that your investment in this new series is both justifiable and necessary." Fanfare on Brahms Hungarian Dances (with pianist Cynthia Raim): "I cannot imagine this music being presented with such overwhelming élan as the Raim/Wehr duo displays on this release. The playing creates a sense of two gifted artists egging each other on to ever higher levels of musicianship, virtuosity and sheer fun-whether or not I am right in suspecting that a lot of smiling must have been going on in the studio, they certainly made me smile again and again. Raim and Wehr are irresistible."
 
Chamber music is an important aspect of Wehr's career. He has toured internationally with the Sartory Trio, violinist Linda Wang, and cellists Zuill Bailey and Clancy Newman, and performed with the Chilingrian, Moscow and Quapaw Quartets. His series at Duquesne has involved over twenty members of the Pittsburgh Symphony, including former concertmaster Andres Cardenes and seven other principal players. Wehr has also made a serious commitment to American composers through recording (his 1988 Decca album of works by Barber, Copland, Corigliano, Persichetti and Pozdro was released worldwide on the Chandos label) and performance: his 2005 Steinway Society recital included local premieres by Sarah Dawson and David Cutler and he presented the 2008 premiere of David Stock's "Eitz Chayim" with PSO violist Marylene Gingras-Roy.
 
David Allen Wehr was born in Princeton, New Jersey, where his parents were students at Westminster Choir College. Growing up in Boise, Idaho, his piano lessons began on his fourth birthday with his mother, and later, with his fatherl. Wehr's other teachers were Peggy Erwin (Miami, Florida), Edward Zolas (Cleveland Institute of Music) and Sequeira Costa (University of Kansas, bachelors and masters degrees in piano performance). Through the university's Artist-in-Residence program, Wehr played in monthly masterclasses with such artists as Leon Fleisher, Malclom Frager, Misha Dichter, Byron Janis and Gary Graffman. He also coached with Jorge Bolet, John Browning and Anne Koscielny. He won the 1975 Chopin-Koscuiszko Prize in New York City, the 1983 National Federation of Music Clubs Young Artist Award, and Second Prizes in the 1983 Naumburg and 1986 Kapell International Piano Competitions. He currently is in great demand as a jurist for national and international piano competitions and as a presenter of master classes.
 For more information, visit www.davidallenwehr.com.

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