Frank Glazer. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

Bates College artist-in-residence Frank Glazer offers an evening of piano music spanning the centuries from Haydn to Hovhaness starting at 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 11, in the Olin Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

The concert is open to the public at no cost, but tickets are required. For tickets and more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

Recently featured on American Public Media’s popular program “The Story,” the 97-year-old Glazer, of Topsham, has had a distinguished international career that includes numerous recordings, solo recitals and performances with orchestras and chamber ensembles. With his wife, the late Ruth Glazer, he founded the Saco River Music Festival, held for many years in Cornish, Maine. Glazer has been an artist in residence at Bates since 1980.

Here’s his May 11 program:

Haydn’s Sonata in E minor, Hob. XVI/34 is one of seven sonatas (out of some five dozen in all) that the composer set in a minor key. In its key modulations and dramatic transition from second to third movements, this piece from the composer’s “Sturm und Drang” period anticipates Beethoven.

Beethoven provides two works on Glazer’s program: the “Phantasie,” Op. 77, and the Sonata in E major, Op. 109. The former captures Beethoven’s adventurousness, seamlessly passing through eight keys, three meter changes and an array of tempos.

The latter, one of Beethoven’s last sonatas, is less dramatic and more lyrical, more intimate, than its predecessors, and concludes with an intricately constructed theme-and-variations set.

“Jhala,” by 20th-century American composer Alan Hovhaness, incorporates Indian and Southeast Asian elements into a more traditional sonata form. The title refers to an Indian musical technique that alternates between melody and drone to build to a climax.

Busoni’s “Turandot’s Frauengemach” is the most popular of a series of six elegies that marked the achievement of the composer’s mature, and impressionistic, style. Based on the folk tune “Greensleeves,” the music is adapted from an orchestral suite that Busoni based on the play “Turandot.”

“Hulan” comes from a collection of Czech dances by Bedřich Smetana, a founding father of Czech music. This popular piece depicts a woman pining for her soldier lover.

The second of Franz Schubert’s sonatas to be published, the Sonata in D major, Op. 53, D. 850, is markedly quicker than its companion works and presents considerable challenges to the pianist.

In honor of the bicentennial of Romantic composer Robert Schumann, Bates College artist-in-residence Frank Glazer performs some of the composer’s best-loved piano pieces at 3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 5, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

The concert is open to the public at no cost, but tickets are required. For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or this olinarts@bates.edu.

The concert coincides with the release of a CD by the pianist. Issued by the college and titled Schubert-Brahms-Beethoven, the CD comprises recordings that Glazer made at Olin in 1998 with the renowned engineer Judith Sherman, but never released. The cover art was created by Pamela Johnson of the college’s studio art faculty. It will be for sale at the concert and is also available online here.

Glazer, 95, has been an artist in residence at Bates since 1980. Internationally renowned, he has spent decades touring, composing, recording and teaching.

Schumann is one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Born in 1810 in Germany, he influenced music considerably through both his compositions and his sway as a music critic.

His compositional style is described as poetic, observing both structural demands and an innovative melodic “stream of consciousness” that challenged a traditional focus on form. Schumann also advanced the concept of “program music,” where prose or poetry provides a matrix for a piece of music.

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth, Glazer will perform a selection of the composer’s many pieces for piano: the early “Papillons,” Op. 2; the 1836 Fantasy in C Major, Op. 17; and the 1834 Symphonic Studies, Op. 13.

Glazer, of Topsham, dedicated much of his 2009-10 concert season to the performance at Bates of the complete cycle of 32 Beethoven piano sonatas. A student of Artur Schnabel and Arnold Schoenberg, he is at home in every style of music from Bach to contemporary. He has concertized in more than 24 countries; appeared on his own television show for NBC stations; made more than 50 recordings and performed 30 world premieres.

Glazer was a founding member of the Eastman Quartet, the Cantilena Chamber Players and the New England Piano Quartette. With his wife, the late Ruth Glazer, he founded the long-running Saco River Festival in Cornish.

Bates College has released a CD by pianist Frank Glazer, a musician of international renown who became artist in residence at Bates 30 years ago this year.

Frank Glazer: Live at the Olin Arts Center comprises music by J.S. Bach, Franz Schubert, Aaron Copland, Godfrey Turner and Frederic Chopin. Retailing for $15 plus a shipping and handling fee, the disk is available from the Bates College Bookstore by phone at 207-786-6121, or via the Web at batestickets.com or at store.batesbookstore.com/music1.html.

Glazer, of Topsham, has enjoyed a distinguished career that includes numerous recordings, solo recitals and performances with orchestras and chamber ensembles. In a era whose pianists often strive for the gloss of mechanical precision and a big sound, Glazer instead makes all else secondary to the music’s own message.

That’s borne out on the new CD. It comprises tracks were recorded during performances marking important career milestones for Glazer, who turned 95 this year: a 2006 concert held 70 years to the day after his New York City debut, and a 2009 date celebrating the 60th anniversary of his first Carnegie Hall appearance.

Seth Warner, manager of the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall at Bates, produced the CD. “My goal was to have a document of Frank still flourishing after all these years,” he explains — “something that would transcend the CD medium and convey Frank’s sound, warmth and presence.” And selections from the 2006 and 2009 concerts filled the bill nicely.

“I’m thrilled that it is a live and unedited recording,” Warner says.

The CD is also intended as a thank-you to Glazer “for all that he has given to Bates and to his supporters,” Warner says. “After every performance he always asks for as many programs as possible so he can send them to his friends around the world, to keep them up to date.

“This disc is a way for Frank to let his supporters hear what he is up to.”

Here’s the music on the CD:

“English” Suite No. 3 in G minor (BWV 808) by J.S. Bach, from the 2006 concert;

Sonata in A minor (D 845) by Franz Schubert, also from 2006;

Piano Variations by Aaron Copland, recorded in 2009;

“Great Paul” by Godfrey Turner, 2009;

and the Scherzo in C-sharp minor (Op. 39) by Frederic Chopin, 2006.

Glazer, who just completed a season-long survey of the complete cycle of 32 Beethoven piano sonatas at Bates, remains a vital presence on the music scene in Maine and beyond. A student of Artur Schnabel and Arnold Schoenberg, among others, Glazer is at home in every style of music from Bach to contemporary. He has concertized in more than 24 countries; appeared on his own television show for NBC stations; made more than 50 recordings and performed 30 world premieres.

Glazer was a founding member of the Eastman Quartet, the Cantilena Chamber Players and the New England Piano Quartette. He taught at the Eastman School of Music for 15 years before coming to Maine in 1980. With his wife, the late Ruth Glazer, he founded the long-running Saco River Festival in Cornish.

There’s more Glazer in the Olin vault. “In the preparations for this recording I discovered that there is an unreleased — but finished and mastered — recording of Frank playing Schubert and Brahms fantasies and a late Beethoven sonata,” Warner says.

It was recorded at Olin in the late 1990s by Grammy-winning classical producer and engineer Judith Sherman. The project was shelved after recording due to market conditions in the industry, Warner explains, “even though the sound and playing are fantastic.”

He is working on obtaining the rights to release the recording.

Admirers of 95-year-old pianist Frank Glazer will be treated to a double dose of the Bates College artist in residence on Friday, April 9.

At 6:15 p.m., former Glazer student Duncan Cumming explores Glazer’s long career and musicianship in a talk titled Frank Glazer: Fountain of Youth.

Then, at 7:30, Glazer himself offers the final installment of his season-long review of the complete Beethoven piano sonatas.

Both events take place in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall at Bates, 75 Russell St. Admission is free, but separate tickets are required for the talk and for the concert. For more information contact 207-786-6135 or this olinarts@bates.edu.

Glazer is a musician of international renown whose professional career began during the 1930s. He has dedicated most of his Bates performances this season to a chronological review of all 32 of Beethoven’s piano sonatas. The April 9 program comprises the Ops. 109, 110 and 111 sonatas.

Cumming, a pianist and member of the music faculty at the University of Albany, graduated from Bates with highest honors in 1993. He studied with Glazer at Bates, and describes the older artist’s influence on his music and teaching as “monumental. It’s with me every day, every concert, every class and lesson I teach.”

Organized in sections that he likens to a sonata’s movements, Cumming’s talk about Glazer will cover myriad aspects of the elder musician’s life and work, and may include a sample Glazer piano lesson and readings from Glazer’s letters.

Asked to summarize Glazer’s contribution to Bates, Cummings noted that this “little corner of the world has had the chance to see one of the great pianists during what has now become, incredibly, his longest career stop — even though it began at age 65.”

Glazer maintains an active performing career at Bates and away. Asked about characteristics of Beethoven’s music that particularly strike him, Glazer points to the composer’s imagination — one so fertile that he rarely needed to reuse an idea.

Beethoven had “the ability to extend a simple idea and have it continue and evolve,” Glazer says. “He also had such a sense of proportion that, at the point when you are just about to become bored, he changes.”

Glazer, of Topsham, has taught at Bates since 1980. His career includes numerous recordings, solo recitals and performances with orchestras and chamber ensembles, including the New England Piano Quartette, of which he was a founder. With his wife, the late Ruth Glazer, he founded the Saco River Music Festival, held for many years in Cornish, Maine.

Cumming’s talk about Glazer will be based on his 2009 book, The Fountain of Youth: The Artistry of Frank Glazer (VDM Verlag). Cumming is a Maine native, born in Presque Isle and raised in Wiscasset.

In 1994, he received a full scholarship from the European Mozart Foundation to study and perform at the European Mozart Academy in Prague. He received a master’s degree in 1996 from the New England Conservatory, and in 2003 earned a doctorate from Boston University.

Cumming has performed in some of the most prestigious concert halls in both the United States and Europe. In 2009, he received a grant to record music of Mozart and Weber on Weber’s own 1812 Brodmann fortepiano.