September 27; 7 PM 

Richard Fleischman, NWSA viola professor since 1996 will be joined by Ciro Fodere, NWSA piano adjunct faculty member for a special NWSA Music Faculty Recital celebrating the 100th anniversary of the world premiere of one of the most important works in the viola repertoire, Ernest Bloch’s Suite for Viola and Piano. The work had its world premiere on September 27, 1919, in Pittsfield Massachusetts, as the prize-winning work in an important competition. Professor Fleischman’s has a close personal history with Ernest Bloch’s Suite for Viola: Louis Bailly, the violist who gave the world premiere of it in 1919 was the teacher of the world-famous violist Joseph De Pasquale. Mr De Pasquale was Professor Fleischman’s viola teacher in the mid-1980s at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. When the Suite was performed in the early 1940’s with the New York Philharmonic, the violist was William Lincer who was Fleischman’s Professor at The Juilliard School. Professor Fleischman had the good fortune to study the Bloch work with these two eminent musicians who had ties to the Bloch Suite in its earliest years, now extending his knowledge to NWSA music students. Also on the program will be a contemporary work by Russian/Israeli composer Boris Pigovat called “Poem of Dawn.” This is a rhapsodic and poetic work that is receiving its North American Premiere.