Bees honors mentor in recitals
By Julie Rausch
Pianist Julie Bees is featuring a Schubert sonata in recitals in three countries this year, including one later this month at WSU.
Bees will perform a Faculty Artist Series concert at 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 25, in Wiedemann Recital Hall.
Bees is playing Schubert’s Sonata in B-Flat Major, D. 960, the last piano sonata Schubert wrote, in honor of Konrad Wolff, who performed it at Peabody Conservatory when she was a student there in the early ‘70s.
"Konrad was a dear friend and mentor to me and this sonata reminds me of him," Bees said.
Wolff was an internationally renowned musician, pianist and writer. His wife, Ilse Bing, was an equally recognized photographer, artist and poet. The couple left WSU a gift of almost $1.5 million for School of Music students.
Also on the program will be a selection of etudes from Opus 25 by Frederic Chopin, and the Claude Debussy preludes – "Hills of Anacapri," "Footsteps in the Snow," and "What the West Wind Saw" and "L’isle joyeuse."
In her teens, Bees won the concerto auditions at the National Music Camp in Interlochen, Mich. She earned her bachelor’s degree studying on full scholarship with famed pianist Leon Fleisher at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. She studied for two years in Vienna and played a New York debut recital before coming to WSU in 1986.
Bees’ first performance of Schubert’s sonata was in Hungary last October. She will play it again in two recitals in Finland at the end of March. She has performed in those countries before.
She will play the concert in St. Petersburg, Russia, in June. This will be her first trip there, and she’ll be joined by her husband Victor Isakov, WSU professor of mathematics and statistics, who was born in Siberia and educated in eastern Russia.. He joined the WSU faculty in 1988.
Call 978-3233 for reserved tickets. Prices are $4 with discounts available.
