Join Professor Weiser for another four-part Zoom course available to anyone across the country.  This course will explore the amazing explosion of Russian composers at the end of the 19th century who helped to revolutionize the piano and expand its capabilities with a wider spectrum of sound and colors.  With the creation and rapid rise of the St. Petersburg and Moscow Conservatoires (in 1862 and 1865), Russia suddenly became an important center for experimentation and invention, first led by the Mighty Five (Balakirev, Cui, Borodin, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov) and then later by Tchaikovsky and the next generation that included Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, and Arensky.   Dr. Weiser will perform many of their wonderful piano works and talk about their lives and the new Russian Nationalism that helped to produce some of the great works of the Western canon.