Virginia Eskin
Virginia Eskin has performed as a soloist with many orchestras, including the Annapolis, Buffalo, Louisville, New Hampshire, Rochester, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Utah Symphony Orchestras; the Boston Classical; the Israel Sinfonietta; and the Boston Pops. She has also performed as a soloist with the New York City and Boston Ballet Companies, at Morgan Library in New York and Jordan Hall in Boston, and in concert halls and museums throughout the United States and Europe.
In 2007, in recognition of the 100th anniversary of Edward MacDowell’s death, Ms. Eskin performed his 2nd Piano Concerto with the New Hampshire Philharmonic and with Boston ‘s Civic Symphony at Jordon Hall. She will also feature MacDowell in a series of “informances” at Boston University ‘s Evergreen Series and at a New England Conservatory piano seminar. She continued her lengthy collaboration with the Portland String Quartet, with whom she performed the Amy Beach Quintet to open their 2008-09 season. In February 2009 she will perform a premiere of Kaprálová’s “Partita” with the Chamber Orchestra of Boston at Jordan Hall, and will perform Beethoven Concertos No. 3 and No. 5 in the Spring.
Eskin’s many recordings include works by American composers Amy Beach, Arthur Foote, Rebecca Clark, and George Chadwick. With the Hawthorne Quartet she recorded Chamber Music From Theresienstadt (Channel Classics), Music of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (Koch), and Silenced Voices (Northeastern). She recorded Dvorak’s Piano Quintet with the Portland String Quartet (Arabesque). Her “Ragtime Project” includes Fluffy-Ruffle Girls (Koch 1999), American Beauties: The Rags of Joseph Lamb (Koch 2000 re-release), and Spring Beauties (Koch 1998). She has also recorded Mrs. H.H.A. Beach (Koch), works by Marion Bauer and Ruth Crawford (Albany), and previously unrecorded works by Marion Bauer (Albany). In 2008 Koch released her premiere recording of works by Czech composer Vítezslava Kaprálová, which has received rave reviews in newspapers and music journals throughout Europe.
Ms. Eskin created and hosted “First Ladies of Music,” a 13-program radio series sponsored by Northeastern University and produced by WFMT Chicago, carried by over 100 radio stations in the United States and abroad. She holds the appointment of Visiting Artist, Northeastern University Department of Music, and received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Keene State College (NH) to recognize her contributions to women’s music.
