“Dantes Variations” a success at two-day conference

Richard D. Russell

On Octo­ber 22, Dan Wang pre­miered my new piano solo, “Dantes Vari­a­tions” at a two-day con­fer­ence spon­sored by the jour­nal 19^th-Century Music and hosted at Ford­ham Uni­ver­sity in New York City. It hap­pened to be the 200^th birth­day of Franz Liszt, and many Liszt pieces were included in the concert.

The inter­dis­ci­pli­nary con­fer­ence was orga­nized by the musi­col­o­gist Lawrence Kramer, edi­tor of the spon­sor­ing jour­nal, who asked me to com­pose a piece for the con­clud­ing con­cert. The top­ics of the two-day sem­i­nar “… range as widely as the con­trib­u­tors’ imag­i­na­tion can com­pass…” including…

“…por­tray­als of music or musi­cians in nineteenth-century lit­er­ary works, musi­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tions in nineteenth-century music of lit­er­ary gen­res, char­ac­ters, or texts, lit­er­ary opera, inci­den­tal music, aes­thetic the­o­ries, mod­els of per­for­mance, treat­ments of nineteenth-century music in twen­ti­eth– and twenty-first-century lit­er­a­ture and film, treat­ments of nineteenth-century lit­er­a­ture in twentieth-and twenty-first-century music, includ­ing opera and film music, and the list goes on.

My piece was a theme and vari­a­tions based on Edmond Dantes from Alexan­der Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo. Here are pic­tures of Mr. Kramer, Mr. Wang, and me. (Click image for larger size.)

Lawrence Kramer opens the concert

Dan Wang per­forms “Dantes Variations.”