7 p.m. Saturday, November 9, 2019
Robert S. Carey Performing Arts Center
Tickets: $26 per person | Season tickets: $117 per person | Flex Pass (any six admissions $125 each) | Telephone 724-805-2177
Violinist Benjamin Baker, a New Zealand native, and pianist Daniel Lebhart, of Hungary, are fresh off engagements at London’s Wigmore Hall and in Galway and Dublin, Ireland.
Benjamin Baker won First Prize and additional performance prizes at the 2016 Young Concert Artists International Auditions. Baker’s first U.S. tour included recital debuts on the Young Concert Artists Series at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and at New York’s Merkin Concert Hall, sponsored by the Peter Jay Sharp Prize. In 2015 he released his first CD for Champs Hill Records which immediately went to No.12 in the Classical Charts.
Baker studied at the Yehudi Menuhin School and the Royal College of Music where he was awarded the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Rose Bowl. He was selected by Young Classical Artists Trust in 2013 and in the same year won 1st Prize at the Windsor International Competition. He plays on a Tononi violin (1709) on loan from a private individual.
Lebhardt won First Prize at the 2014 Young Concert Artists Auditions in Paris, and then won YCA’s International Auditions in New York, where he was also awarded the Paul A. Fish Memorial Prize and four concert performance prizes. Among his many other accolades, Lebhardt won First Prizes at the Russian Music International Piano Competition in California, Citta di Gorizia International Piano Competition in Italy, Kosice International Piano Competition in Slovakia, and Carl Filtsch International Piano Competition in Romania.
Lebhardt started piano lessons at the age of six, and from the age of nine attended the Special School of the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, studying with István Gulyás and Gyöngyi Keveházi. He attended the Royal Academy of Music in London with Christopher Elton, and the studio of Pascal Nemirovski. He has played in master classes for Alfred Brendel, Leslie Howard, Ferenc Rados and Mikhail Voskresensky.