After a two-year break, music faculty are bringing back Mayfest, featuring music from Bach to Kurtág, including works by Arensky, Dvořák, Puccini, Brahms  and a new commission by Cornellian Joseph Phibbs, a tribute to his teacher, Steven Stucky. 

A through-line of the festival underscores the generational impact of music instruction: the program includes works by Lutosławski, who mentored Stucky, who served as a mentor to Phibbs.

The event’s artistic directors Xak Bjerken, professor of music, and Miri Yampolsky, senior lecturer and artist in residence, say the festival also includes works they have long wished to include — a Prokofiev quintet and a work for multiple pianos, Rachmaninoff’s Suite No. 2 for Two Pianos, Op. 1, which welcomes back Daniel Anastasio ‘11, a former student of Bjerken’s. 

The Dvořák quartet, Beethoven trio, Brahms trio, and Franck quintet are “great masterpieces that we love to play,” Yampolsky said, adding that this reflects a guiding principle of the festival itself. “That’s the theme — which should really be a theme of any concert — good music played by good people.”

Read the full story on The College of Arts & Sciences website.