Sarah Davis Buechner has been celebrated as a pianist of noteworthy accomplishment, virtuosic mastery, artistic sensitivity and extraordinary versatility.She will appear in concert at the Pender Harbour School of Music at 2 p.m. on Nov. 20.A major prizewinner of many of the world's most prestigious international piano competitions - Reine Elisabeth of Belgium, Leeds, Salzburg, Sydney and Vienna - she established her early career by winning the gold medal of the 1984 Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition in Salt Lake City, Utah, and as a bronze medalist of the 1986 Tschaikowsky International Piano Competition in Moscow. She has appeared as soloist with America's most prominent orchestras: the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Saint Louis and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras, and abroad with the Japan Philharmonic, City of Birmingham (U.K.) Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, Kuopio (Finland) Philharmonic, Slovak Philharmonic and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León (Spain).She also has a whimsical side. Her recording of piano music by George Gershwin was selected as a record of the month by Stereophile magazine. Pro Piano has just released her CD of the complete piano music of Stephen Foster, and her fourth recording for Koch International was recently released featuring piano music by Rudolf Friml. She is one of the few pianists to actively perform piano scores to silent movies, notably the 150-minute long restored version of Ben-Hur (1925) and the Danish classic Master of the House (1925).In 2003, Buechner was appointed assistant professor of piano at the University of British Columbia (UBC). She is a former faculty member of New York University and has presented lectures and master classes worldwide, from the Royal Academy in London to Indiana University to the Kobe-Yamate Gakuen in Osaka, Japan.Tickets for her concert are $20, available at John Henry's in Garden Bay, Harbour Insurance in Madeira Park, Talewind Books in Sechelt and Coast Books in Gibsons. For more information, see www.penderharbourmusic.ca.
