On Halloween, ETSU faculty members Sean Hawthorne and Esther Park will perform pieces that embody the spirit of spooky season.
“The recital is on Halloween, so I wanted a general Halloween-themed recital,” Hawthorne said. “I wanted to include a lot of the favorites from cello and piano repertoire but also be playing things that, in terms of character, were fitting of the holiday.”
In order to achieve this, he focuses the recital on elements of darkness and fantasy. Some of the composers featured in the program include Claude Debussy, Dmitri Shostakovich and Robert Schumann, which according to Hawthorne, includes some familiar tunes.
“They are audience favorites as well as favorites for performance,” Hawthorne said. “I love performing these pieces myself. Esther Park is such a fantastic pianist that we are having a lot of fun working on these together.”
This will be Hawthorne’s first full-length recital on campus, but he has been preparing for it since the summer. Hawthorne explains that his favorite part in preparing the pieces have been getting to know the newer works of music better, specifically the Shostakovich sonata.
“I think I did not necessarily expect how much I was going to fall in love with this piece over the last couple of months, but really getting to know it and getting to know the interaction between the piano and cello part has been just a fantastic experience for me,” Hawthorne said. “I think [the Shostakovich sonata] is such a wonderful piece, and I look forward to playing it this week and many more times in my career in the future.”
Hawthorne hopes that community members will come out and enjoy the music and appreciate it as much as he does.
“I think that is it is genuinely great music and that is one of the things that drove this program,” Hawthorne said. “Yes, I wanted to play a Halloween recital, but I also wanted to introduce students to pieces of music that I think are genuinely great and deserve to be alive and well so many years later after they are written.”
The performance will be held in the Mathes Hall Auditorium at 7:30 p.m. Admission is free. A $10 donation is suggested to help cover the needs of ETSU music students.
