Guests will hear the sounds of Beethoven and Rachmaninoff during a faculty recital on Monday, Sept. 17.

The concert will be held in Edmunds Hall at 7:30 p.m. This program is free and open to the public.

Dr. Richard Thomas, cellist and associate professor of music at Presbyterian College, and Dr. Barry David Salwen, pianist and associate professor of music at the University of North Carolina – Wilmington, will perform at the program.

The musicians will perform Beethoven’s “Sonata in D Major Op. 102, No. 5” (1815) and Rachmaninoff’s “Sonata in G minor Op. 19” (1901).

These sonatas were the first works written by each composer following a three-year period of creative inactivity – Beethoven after a prolonged illness and complex custody lawsuit and Rachmaninoff after a mental breakdown caused by the failure of his first symphony, Thomas said.

They were also the last works written by these composers for solo instruments with piano, he noted.

Thomas is a former member of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Colombia and Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional of the Dominican Republic.

He is also former faculty member of the Universidad del Cauca and Universidad del Valle in Colombia; the Conservatorio Nacional of the Dominican Republic; the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities; and the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Thomas was also String Department Head at Camp Encore-Coda in Sweden, Maine from 1999-2008.

Salwen is associate professor of music at the University of North Carolina – Wilmington.

He is an international concert pianist, regularly giving performances and master classes in the U.S., Europe, Israel and Asia. Salwen received his bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate in piano from The Juilliard School.

Among his nine CDs is the first recording of the complete solo piano music of the American master Roger Sessions. He is the first artist to record all of these works. In 2005, the recording was reissued on Albany Records.