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YSM Dean Robert Blocker to perform with colleagues, Yale Philharmonia

If there is one composer whose music has always resonated deeply with School of Music Dean Robert Blocker, it is Mozart. "From my earliest memories I loved Mozart," Blocker said. As a young musician, he said, "there was something magical about the sound."

On Wednesday, March 7, Blocker will share his love of Mozart's music with the Horowitz Piano Series audience in a concert featuring members of the School's piano faculty — including recently retired professor Peter Frankl — and members of the Yale Philharmonia, led by YSM lecturer-in-music and New Haven Symphony Orchestra Music Director William Boughton.

The all-Mozart program, a study in collaboration, to be sure, will begin with a performance, with faculty pianists Boris Berman and Wei-Yi Yang, of Carl Czerny's piano-six-hands arrangement of the Overture to Le nozze di Figaro. Blocker will then be joined by members of the Yale Philharmonia for a performance of Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, K. 488.

Blocker has played K. 488 more than any other concerto. "I truly love that piece," he said. "I learned it with my first and only piano teacher before I went to college. I always learn new things in the piece."

While the Sonata for Piano Four-Hands in B-flat major, K.358/186c, which he will perform with faculty pianist and School of Music Deputy Dean Melvin Chen, is new repertoire for Blocker, the Concerto No. 10 for Two Pianos in E-flat major, K. 365/316a, which he will perform with Frankl and the Philharmonia, is one that holds special significance. "When Peter Frankl celebrated his 70th birthday" in 2005, Blocker said, "he invited me to play the Double Concerto with him." For this occasion, he said, "it just seems like the most wonderful thing to do — create a program and have Peter be part of that."

The concert, for Blocker, is a celebration of the education he receives every day at YSM. "Colleagues have given me the kind of musical fabric that makes every day better than it deserves to be. The best thing about this job," he said, "is learning from students and faculty. I don't even pretend to know what they know. That's the joy in this."

As he sees it, the March 7 program offers a chance to have all involved "touching the hem of Mozart's coat." It is also an opportunity for Blocker to share with an audience the music that for him remains "a musical compass."