Tuesday, 27 October, 2020 | 7:00 PM

Peter Susskind

The Russian Tradition

Peter Susskind spotlights the great Russian piano teachers of the 19th century and their students right up to the mid 20th century.

Peter Susskind spotlights the great Russian piano teachers of the 19th century and their students right up to the mid 20th century, including Anton Rubinstein, Nikolai Rubinstein, Josef Lhévinne, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Shura Cherkassky, Emil Gilels, Vladimir Horowitz, Sviatoslav Richter, as well as Artur Rubinstein and Mieczyslaw Horszowski (both actually Polish, but certainly from the same tradition). The talk will be illuminated with recordings and videos from their catalog.

About the artist

Although now a resident of San Francisco, Peter Susskind is a native Briton educated at
Trinity College, Cambridge, and at the Royal College of Music in London. Until recently he was the Executive Director of San Francisco’s Pocket Opera. He is the Artistic Advisor for Noontime concerts at Old St. Mary’s Cathedral. Before that, he was the music director and conductor of the South Bay Youth Orchestra, and subsequently was Executive Director of the Midsummer Mozart Festival.   He has conducted many British groups including the English Chamber Orchestra at London’s Royal Festival Hall and The London Mozart Players. He was Assistant Conductor of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra from 1984 to 1986 and also Music Director and Conductor of the Saint Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra. He has also conducted subscription concerts with the San José, Youngstown, Marin, and San Francisco Chamber Symphonies. He has appeared with the Minnesota Orchestra’s Sommerfest, the Honolulu Symphony and the Conservatory Orchestras in both Saint Louis and San Francisco. Abroad he has conducted the Prague Symphony Orchestra, the Seoul Philarmonic in Korea and at the Musikverein in Vienna with the Tonkünstler Orchestra. In 1995 he conducted the U.C. Berkeley Symphony for a semester and also led the San Francisco Symphony in children’s concerts. A regular speaker with the SF Opera, for many years, he has also given many pre-concert talks for various Bay Area Music organizations, including the San Francisco Symphony, Cantabile Chorale, and Stanford’s Lively Arts series.


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