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Historical Piano Concerts Series
About the Musicians

Richard Shirk


 
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.