The Curtis Institute of Music and Jonathan Biss Release Part 5 of Exploring Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas

PHILADELPHIA—September 30, 2019—The Curtis Institute of Music and Jonathan Biss launch Part 5 of the popular online course Exploring Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas, available now on Coursera. Free and available on demand, the new lectures are the latest in a series offering an in-depth look into the Beethoven piano sonatas from a performer’s point of view. Jonathan Biss is an alumnus and a member of the piano faculty at Curtis, where he holds the Neubauer Family Chair in Piano Studies.

Access the courses at Coursera.org/Curtis:

Exploring Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

Curtis was the first conservatory to offer a massive open online course (MOOC) on Coursera. Since the course launched in 2013, it has reached a global music community of more than 150,000 people in 185 countries.

“It has been six years, to my astonishment, since the first set of lectures for Exploring Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas launched,” says Mr. Biss. “Preparing those lectures was one of the most challenging things I had ever done, and one of the most enriching. The experience has only grown more rewarding—while remaining just as challenging—as it has continued. I’m particularly excited about sharing these new lectures, first of all because two of them focus on the ‘Hammerklavier’ sonata—one of the works that has had the profoundest impact on me—but also because they are going live just as I’m embarking on a year of almost total immersion in Beethoven’s music. He looms larger in my life every day.”

What began as a broad overview of all the sonatas and their place in musical history has evolved into a closer look at individual sonatas, examining each movement and its technical and emotional characteristics. In Part 5, Jonathan Biss addresses three piano sonatas: No. 13 in E-flat major, Op. 27, No. 1; No. 16 in G major, Op. 31, No. 1; and Sonata No. 29 in B-flat major, Op. 106 (“Hammerklavier”). Each lecture includes examples on the keyboard and in-depth historical, theoretical, and artistic analysis of the major musical developments represented by each sonata.

The sixth and final course in this series is set for release in early January 2020.

No prior musical knowledge is necessary to take the courses. The lectures are designed for students of any background who want to learn more about classical music. Just as Curtis educates students for careers in the 21st century, the school also strives to educate modern-day audiences, building a public that is enthusiastic and appreciative of classical music through increased opportunities to learn and listen.

These latest releases coincide with global celebrations of Beethoven’s 250th birthday, and Mr. Biss further deepens his familiarity with the composer and his 32 piano sonatas this season through a variety of projects including the final release in his recordings of the complete sonatas in November 2019 and full cycles of the works in the United States and abroad. Additionally Mr. Biss performs Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73 (“Emperor”) with the Curtis Symphony Orchestra for their regular season at Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts and as part of a seven-city U.S. tour from January 30–February 8, 2020.

In the 2019–20 school year, the Curtis Institute of Music celebrates 95 years of educating and training exceptionally gifted young musicians to engage a local and global community through the highest level of artistry. With a small student body of about 175, Curtis provides each young musician with an unparalleled education alongside musical peers, distinguished by personalized attention from celebrated faculty and a “learn by doing” philosophy. To ensure that admissions are based solely on artistic promise, Curtis makes an investment in each admitted student so that no tuition is charged for their studies. Curtis students hone their craft through more than 200 orchestra, opera, and solo and chamber music offerings each year in Philadelphia and around the world.

Jonathan Biss has appeared as a soloist with the world’s foremost orchestras—including the New York Philharmonic; the Philadelphia, Cleveland, Philharmonia, and Royal Concertgebouw orchestras; and the Chicago, Boston, London, and NHK symphony orchestras—and has given recitals in such renowned venues as Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Théâtre du Châtelet, and the Berliner Philharmonie.

An enthusiastic chamber musician, Mr. Biss has collaborated with many of today’s finest players, including Richard Goode, Mitsuko Uchida, Midori, Mark Padmore, the Elias String Quartet, and Miriam Fried. He is the recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Award, the Andrew Wolf Memorial Chamber Music Award, an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and the 2003 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, among other honors.

Mr. Biss is recording the complete Beethoven piano sonatas for Onyx Classics and previously made four CDs for EMI Classics, as well as one for Wigmore Hall Live. He is also a prolific writer and is the first classical musician to publish two Kindle Singles, A Pianist Under the Influence and Beethoven’s Shadow.

He studied at Indiana University with Evelyne Brancart and at the Curtis Institute of Music with Leon Fleisher. Mr. Biss joined the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in 2011, where he holds the Neubauer Family Chair in Piano Studies.

In 2013 Mr. Biss launched one of two inaugural Curtis-Coursera courses, Exploring Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas, which had an initial enrollment of over 35,000 students. He continues to add lectures to the course periodically.

Coursera has registered a total of 40 million users since its launch in 2012, and its over 150 partners include international institutions from Switzerland to Mexico to Hong Kong. The hundreds of free courses it offers are from top-tier universities and cover a broad range of disciplines, including medicine, literature, history, and computer science, among others. Coursera is backed by leading venture capital firms such as Kleiner Perkins, New Enterprise Associates, GSV Capital, Learn Capital, and SEEK Group.

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