(PRINCETON, NJ) -- On Thursday, November 17 at 12:15pm, Westminster Conservatory at Nassau will continue with a recital centered on music of Franz Schubert. Three Westminster Conservatory of Music faculty members will perform: pianists Ena Bronstein Barton and Phyllis Alpert Lehrer, and Melissa Bohl, oboe. The recital will take place in the Niles Chapel of Nassau Presbyterian Church, 61 Nassau Street in Princeton. It is open to the public free of charge; masking is optional.
The program comprises Schubert's Impromptu in E-flat, D. 899, op. 99 for solo piano, Schubert's Divertimento à la Hongroise, op. 54 for piano four hands, and Twelve Variations on a Theme of Franz Schubert for oboe and piano by Leone Sinigaglia.
Bohl is the principal oboist of the Capital Philharmonic of New Jersey, the Orchestra of St. Peter-by-the-Sea, the Bravura Philharmonic Orchestra and the American Repertory Ballet Orchestra. She plays oboe and English horn with the Plainfield Symphony and performs regularly with many other area musical organizations, including the Garden State Symphonic Band and the Central Jersey Symphonic Orchestra. At Westminster Conservatory she teaches oboe and is head of the woodwind, brass and percussion department. Bohl has degrees in music from the Eastman School of Music, the University of Notre Dame and Princeton University.
Born in Santiago, Chile, Barton began her career in South America, touring her native continent. After winning a national piano competition, she traveled to New York to study with Claudio Arrau and Rafael de Silva. Her New York debut at Town Hall was received with critical acclaim. Since then Barton’s career has taken her across the United States, back to South America, to Europe, the Near and Far East, Australia and New Zealand. Barton taught at California State University-Fresno for thirteen years. She was artist-in-residence at Monterey Peninsula College in California and has conducted master classes at the University of Veracruz in Xalapa, Mexico, and in Santiago, Chile. For many years she served as head of the piano department at Westminster Conservatory and as a member of the piano faculty of Westminster Choir College of Rider University.
Lehrer is known internationally as a teacher, performer, clinician, author and adjudicator. She has given master classes, workshops and enjoyed an active concert career as a soloist and collaborative artist in the United States, Canada, Central and South America, Asia and Europe. Lehrer is a professor emerita of piano at Westminster Choir College of Rider University and continues to serve on the faculty of Westminster Conservatory. Her collaboration of over 35 years with duo piano partner Barton includes two CDs featuring duets of Mozart, Schubert and Debussy, and two-piano works of Laurie Altman, Mozart, Schumann and Rachmaninoff. Lehrer received a bachelor's degree with a music concentration from the University of Rochester and Eastman School of Music and a master's degree in piano from the Juilliard School of Music.
Westminster Conservatory at Nassau recitals will resume on January 19 with a recital featuring duo pianists Galena Prilutskaya and Inessa Gleyzerova.
This program is made possible in part by the Mercer County Cultural and Heritage Commission through funding from the Mercer County Board of Chosen Freeholders and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.
