Harpsicord concert at Phelps

BINGHAMTON, NY – The executive director of the Binghamton Philharmonic Orchestra is returning to his roots as a musician by giving a recital this weekend. 

Paul Cienniwa is joining his longtime collaborator Michael Bahmann to perform Bach’s The Art of the Fugue. 

They will be performing the piece on 2 harpsicords that belong to Cienniwa.

Harpsicords predate pianos and are different in that the strings are plucked rather than be struck as they are in a piano. 

Cienniwa says The Art of Fugue was Bach’s final composition. 

“Bach covers the whole range of human emotions with a minimum of material. He takes this fugue subject and then develops it and expands it, giving it all the possibilities that an 18th century composer could have had and then some. But, it’s a different kind of virtuosity, a virtuosity of emotion of being able to make the instrument sing,” says Cienniwa. 

The concert is this Sunday at 3 P-M at the Phelps Mansion Museum on Court Street in Binghamton. 

Tickets are $20. 

More information at PhelpsMansion.org.

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