David Witten, pianist
with
Grace Renée Pfleger, mezzo-soprano
This event forms part of Carnegie Hall’s festival, United in Sound: America at 250
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ABOUT THIS PERFORMANCE
American pianist David Witten returns to the Italian Academy to celebrate America’s 250th birthday with music by American and Italian-American composers. The program includes works by musicians who were personal friends of George Washington. Witten’s sold-out and warmly received 2024 recital at the Academy was part of Carnegie Hall’s festival "Fall of the Weimar Republic: Dancing on the Precipice."
Carnegie Hall's latest citywide festival, United in Sound: America at 250—a multifaceted reflection of the United States at 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence—is the occasion for Witten's unique and surprising program.
Witten, familiar to Italian Academy audiences from dazzling performances over the past several years, is a musician specializing in works by composers at risk of being unfairly forgotten, particularly the music of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895–1968), a Jewish Italian who immigrated to the US in 1939. He wrote scores for more than 200 Hollywood films over the following 25 years. He became a US citizen in 1946. David Witten recorded Castelnuovo-Tedesco's music for solo piano and celebrated it with a recital at the Italian Academy in 2018.
In this recital, Witten will perform some of Castelnuovo-Tedesco's irresistible portraits of Hollywood stars: Charlie Chaplin, Mickey Mouse, and Deana Durbin. He'll also perform a sonata by Alexander Reinagle, a pianist and composer hired by George and Martha Washington to give lessons to their granddaughter (Nelly Custis); music of Francis Hopkinson, who signed the Declaration of Independence and dedicated his music to George Washington; Charles Ives's Variations on "America"; Judith Lang Zaimont's preludes evoking the months of the year; and Louis Moreau Gottschalk's inimitable work "The Banjo."