Piano Duet And Piano Duo Recital Set For March 4

by Richard Veit

Pianists Jane Abbott-Kirk and Mary Rich will present a joint recital at Baylor University at 6 p.m. Thursday, March 4, in Roxy Grove Hall.
The duo will open the program with Ferruccio Busoni's Duettino concertante nach Mozart, a two-piano work based on the final movement of the great Austrian composer's Piano Concerto No. 19 in F major, K. 459.
They will follow with another piece for piano duo, the Variations on a Theme by Haydn, Op. 56b, written and orchestrated in 1873 by Johannes Brahms. The work premiered also that year, but the two-piano version was not heard in public until 1882.
After intermission, the pianists will play George Bizet's 1871 suite for piano duet known as Jeux d'enfants, and then the three Andalusian Dances by Spanish composer Manuel Infante.
Abbott-Kirk is associate professor of piano at Baylor, where she has been a member of the music faculty since 1973. She received her bachelor's and master's degrees from Indiana University. Her principal teachers have included Sidney Foster, Menahem Pressler, Frank Mannheimer and Edna Golandsky. She has appeared as guest soloist with symphony orchestras in Houston and San Antonio, as well as at the University of Kansas, Indiana and Baylor.
Rich is chair of the music department at Lon Morris College in Jacksonville. She has performed throughout the southeast, including as soloist in the Ravel Concerto with the Baylor Symphony Orchestra. She received both her bachelor's and master's degrees from Baylor, where her teachers were Michael Ard, Roger Keyes and Abbott-Kirk.
The recital is free and open to the public. For more information, call the Baylor School of Music at 710-3991.