Historical
Piano Concerts Series
About
the Musicians
Richard Shirk
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Since
making his New York recital debut in Alice Tully Hall as the first-prize
winner of the Leschetizky Competition, Richard Shirk has twice appeared
in Avery Fisher Hall at the Mostly Mozart Festival. He has also performed
at the Long Island Beethoven Festival, the Bar Harbor Festival, the National
Arts Club, the Shandelee Music Festival, New York University, Harvard,
Columbia, Stanford, and University of Colorado. Abroad, he has given recitals
at Wigmore Hall in London, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, the Conservatorio
in Bologna, Diligentia Hall in the Hague, the Atelier in Brussels, and
the Amerikahaus in Frankfurt. Richard Shirk has performed in Poland several
times, giving recitals and master-classes in Warsaw and Gdansk. He has
been to Japan and Korea several times to perform and teach. In addition,
he has been featured on the Concertgebouw’s series in Amsterdam highlighting
the performance of the Romantic piano repertoire on authentic nineteenth-century
instruments. Shirk’s all-Mozart recital in Merkin Hall was broadcast nationwide
over National Public Radio. In reviewing his recording of solo works of
Mozart on the Classic Masters label, Audio Magazine called Shirk “an impeccable
Mozart pianist.”
As chamber musician, Shirk has appeared with the Mozarteum and Daniel Quartets and has collaborated with noted artists, including soprano June Anderson and clarinetist Gervase de Peyer. Mr. Shirk and Karlheinz Franke, concertmaster of the Mozarteum Orchestra have toured Europe as the Mozarteum Duo of Salzburg, also performing in Egypt and Turkey. Mr. Shirk is a graduate of the Mannes College of Music, where he was a scholarship student of Richard Goode and received the Newton Swift Piano Award. He has also studied at the Juilliard School and Indiana University. His teachers have included Adele Marcus, Ania Dorfmann, Harris Goldsmith, and Seymour Bernstein. Shirk has taught at the Manhattan School of Music and is currently on the faculty of the Mannes College of Music. In June, 2004, Mr. Shirk performed an all-Grieg program for his first appearance on the Historical Piano Concerts Series. |