Pianist returns for annual Forte Festival

By: Casey Gillis | Lynchburg News and Advance
Published: September 24, 2009

Pianist Gustavo Romero will be back in the Hill City next week for the fourth annual Forte Chamber Music Festival.

It begins on Oct. 2 at 11 a.m. with an already sold-out performance of “Peter and the Wolf,” with Romero on piano, and continues with two more concerts and a young artists’ piano competition.

A solo recital — in which Romero will play one of Beethoven’s most complex sonatas, Piano Sonata #29 in B flat major — is scheduled for 6 p.m. on Oct. 2 in Randolph College’s Presser Hall. It will be followed by a cocktail reception with heavy hors d’oeuvres, and tickets are $90 per person.

The Young Artists Piano Competition will begin at 10 a.m. on Oct. 3 in the Academy of Fine Arts’ Warehouse Theatre. The biggest in the festival’s history, it will feature eight finalists competing for a $3,000 prize and the chance to perform in another concert, set for 7:30 p.m. that evening, also in the Warehouse Theatre.

In years past, the competition has only included six finalists, but organizers expanded the field this time around. The students are from New York, North Carolina, Maryland and Washington, D.C., as well as Virginia.

“There were so many good ones (that) we couldn’t cut them,” says Martha Goodman, a Forte board member.

In addition to featuring the winner, the Oct. 3 concert also will showcase Romero playing as part of a sextet that will honor the 200th anniversary of Mendelssohn’s birth.

After a champagne intermission, four pianists will play the overture from Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro,” Debussy’s “Petite Suite” and Dvorak’s “Slavic Dances” on two pianos — something they’re calling “Two Pianos, Eight Hands.” The pianists are Naomi Amos, Jeanne Backhoven-Craig, Anna Billias and Noemi Otto.

“It’s two Steinways, with two pianists on each one,” Goodman says. “It is something spectacular.”

Piano competition tickets are $10, and the Saturday night concert is $25 for adults and $19 for students.

To purchase tickets, call (434) 846-TIXX. For more information, visit www.fortechambermusic.org.