Math & Cultural

Sonata No. 29, op. 106 in B-flat Major “Hammerklavier” (1817-18)                              Ludwig van Beethoven 

Allegro                                                                                                                                     (1770-1827) 

Scherzo: Assai vivace 

Adagio sostenuto 

Introduzione: Largo. Allegro — Fuga: Allegro risoluto 

 

 

Theodora Serbanescu Martin is a recent UC Berkeley graduate with majors in Music and English and a minor in German. While at Berkeley, she studied piano with Martha Wasley; her previous teachers include Hans Boepple and Carmen Enescu. 

Theodora has attended numerous summer festivals throughout Europe such as the International Piano Academy in Freiburg, Germany and the Dublin International Festival in Ireland, and took master classes with world-renowned professors including John O’Connor, Vladimir Ovchinnikov, Seymour Lipkin, Katarzyna Popowa-Zydron and Malcolm Bilson. 

She has performed numerous standard and non-standard concertos in the U.S. and abroad, including Brahms’s Second, Prokofiev’s Second, Beethoven’s Fourth, Scharwenka’s Fourth and Stanford’s Second; some of the orchestras she worked with include the UCBSO, Saratoga Symphony, Kostroma Symphony Orchestra and the Lublin Chamber Orchestra. Her performance awards include first prize in the MTAC Concerto, Marilyn Mindell, AFAF, International Russian Music, and Young Pianists’ Beethoven competitions. In addition, Theodora is a recipient of the Eisner Prize in the Creative Arts and a Mary Nuñes Souza Prize from the Music Department, as well as an H.W. Hill Scholarship from the English Department. Theodora also received the Charlene Conrad Liebau Library Prize for Undergraduate Research this semester for her music honors thesis on Brahms, “Brahms’s Piano Exercise Mode and the Politics of Friendship.” In addition to this, Theodora also completed an English thesis, “A Poetics of Performance: Agency, Voices, and “the I” in Sir Thomas Wyatt’s Poetry.” 

While at Berkeley, Theodora was a member of the UCBSO, frequently performed chamber music, and studied the fortepiano alongside modern piano performance. In addition, she has attended the 2nd Rubin Institute for Music Criticism and is also a music reviewer for Peninsula Reviews and Bachtrack.

In the fall, Theodora will be continuing her studies of music at Cornell University with the Musicology PhD. Her most important professional goal is to cultivate a career as performing scholar and to advocate for eager collaboration between performance studies and musicology. She plans to primarily focus her studies on Brahms and other German Romantic music.