Luminaries: Piano Music Known and Unknown

Luminaries: Piano Music Known and Unknown

Luminaries: Piano Music Known and Unknown features pianist Dr. Asher Armstrong in a program exploring an “alternative history” of piano music, centering on 20th-century works by women composers whose voices have long remained outside the standard canon. Shaped by personal histories marked by war, displacement, and cultural identity, the music of Maria Herz, Gayane Chebotaryan, Jean Coulthard, and Veronique Vaka reveals a wide expressive range—from Romantic and Impressionistic influences to modernist clarity and vivid evocations of the natural world. These rarely heard works are placed in dialogue with César Franck’s monumental Prelude, Chorale, and Fugue and a concluding transcription of Schubert’s Nacht und Träume, linking overlooked traditions with familiar masterpieces.