Malcolm Bilson is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 pianist specializing in performance on the fortepiano

Fortepiano

Fortepiano designates the early version of the piano, from its invention by the Italian instrument maker Bartolomeo Cristofori around 1700 up to the early 19th century. It was the instrument for which Haydn, Mozart, and the early Beethoven wrote their piano music...

, which is the 18th century version of the piano

Piano

The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

. Bilson is the Frederick J. Whiton Professor of Music in Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

, Ithaca, N.Y.

Ithaca, New York

The city of Ithaca, is a city in upstate New York and the county seat of Tompkins County, as well as the largest community in the Ithaca-Tompkins County metropolitan area...

.

Bilson is known for his series of recordings (on the Archiv label) of the piano concerto

Piano concerto

A piano concerto is a concerto written for piano and orchestra.See also harpsichord concerto; some of these works are occasionally played on piano...

s of Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...

, in collaboration with Sir John Eliot Gardiner

John Eliot Gardiner

Sir John Eliot Gardiner CBE FKC is an English conductor. He founded the Monteverdi Choir , the English Baroque Soloists and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique...

 and the English Baroque Soloists

English Baroque Soloists

The English Baroque Soloists is a chamber orchestra playing on period instruments, formed in 1978 by English conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner. Its repertoire comprises music from the early Baroque period to the Classical period...

. He has also recorded the complete Mozart and Schubert

Franz Schubert

Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...

 piano sonatas for Hungaroton. In collaboration with six of his former students Bilson has produced a complete recording, on Claves Records, of the piano sonata

Piano sonata

A piano sonata is a sonata written for a solo piano. Piano sonatas are usually written in three or four movements, although some piano sonatas have been written with a single movement , two movements , five or even more movements...

s of Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...

. These recordings use a set of nine restored or replica pianos, each of a type contemporaneous with the sonata being performed. He also created a DVD, "Knowing the Score," which questions many of the basic concepts of musical performance taught in conservatories and music schools around the world, specifically, the lack of adherence to notated articulations and assumptions about the length of rhythmic values. Bilson has published several articles on the subject of interpreting late 18th- and early 19th-century compositions by Schubert, Mozart and Beethoven in Early Music and Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae.

Fortepiano builder Carey Beebe

Carey Beebe

Carey Beebe, born in Melbourne in 1960, is an Australian harpsichord maker and technician.-Early training and work:After studies at the Sydney Conservatorium where his teachers included Gordon Watson and Robert Goode, Beebe graduated with a music degree as a harpsichord major and three performance...

 assesses Bilson's influence as follows (http://www.hpschd.nu/index.html?nav/nav-4.html&t/welcome.html&http://www.hpschd.nu/fp.html):

Malcolm Bilson, who began after 'the Father of the Fortepiano', Phil[ip] Belt, dropped around one of his first reproduction instruments to try, still provides great impetus to modern makers. His Fortepiano Summer Schools in the 1980s were an inspiration, and many of the musicians who attended those schools, along with his Doctoral graduates, have spread the word around the globe. Bilson's DG Archiv recordings of the complete Mozart Concerti were a milestone.

Bilson was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

American Academy of Arts and Sciences

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...

in 1994.

External links

• Prof. Bilson's Web page at Cornell University
• Web page for the multi-piano Beethoven project
• Web page Prof. Bilson's "Knowing the Score" DVD
• Articles on Cornell's celebration of Bilson's 70th birthday on October 24, 2005
  • "Piano concerts and symposium will be music and words to Malcolm Bilson's ears"
  • "Bilson to celebrate his 70th with students".