Pianist Jonathan Biss in Concert April 18, 2009

Brilliant young American pianist Jonathan Biss returns to San Francisco Performances bringing a program of works by Mozart, Kurtag, Schubert and Chopin.

San Francisco Performances presented Biss, now 28, in his San Francisco recital debut in March 2007. An intelligent and compelling artist, his family includes three generations of acclaimed musicians, most notably his grandmother, Raya Garbousova, the cellist for whom Samuel Barber composed his Cello Concerto. Biss's mother is violinist Miriam Fried and his father is violist/violinist Paul Biss.

Jonathan Biss began his piano studies at age 6, going on to study at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia with pianist Leon Fleisher. This October, in celebration of Fleisher's 80th birthday, Biss will join pianists Yefim Bronfman, Katherine Jacobson Fleisher and Fleisher himself for concerts in New York, Boston and Baltimore. They will play both individually and in four-handed combinations.

Along with an Avery Fisher Career Grant and a Gilmore Young Artist Award, Biss was recipient of a 2005 Leonard Bernstein Award and was the only American chosen to participate in the BBC's "New Generation Artist Program." He records on the EMI Classics label, and his disc of Beethoven and Schumann earned a Gramophone Magazine Editor's Choice award.

The complete program for the Herbst concert will be Mozart's "Piano Sonata in C minor, K. 457"; Kurtag's Selections from "Jatekok"; Schubert's "Piano Sonata in C Major, D. 840"; and several works by Chopin - "Barcarolle in F-sharp Major, Opus 60," "Three Mazurkas, Opus 59," "Nocturne in E Major, Opus 62, No. 2" and "Ballade No. 4 in F minor, Opus 52."

$49/$32.

Official Website: http://www.performances.org