Piano and classical music devotees are invited to experience a recital April 5 at St. Mary’s Seminary & University that explores the depth and range of piano music written for four hands.
Father Paul Maillet and Vladimir Stoupel will showcase their individual talent and collaborative style while traversing the works of composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert, and Gabriel Fauré.
Maillet studied with Leon Fleisher at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University and is vice rector at St. Mary’s. Stoupel was born in Moscow and studied at the Central Music School, then the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory.
Both pianists are accomplished performers, critically acclaimed, and call Baltimore home. Stoupel told Baltimore Fishbowl in an email that they met through a project dedicated to French composers. The program was a planned collaboration between St. Mary’s and Peabody in 2019.
“Unfortunately, the pandemic put an abrupt end to this project, but we became friends,” Stoupel wrote. “I heard Fr. Maillet a couple of times at his recitals at St. Mary’s and was fascinated by his musicality and his commanding piano playing.”
Maillet’s career as a classical concert pianist took a spiritual detour when he felt a calling to the priesthood and began his seminary studies at Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary in 1995. Ordained in 2001, Maillet was a parish minister in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, then on the faculty of St. Patrick’s Seminary in California (with a 5-year period spent at The Catholic University of America doing doctoral work) and has been on the formation faculty at St. Mary’s since 2018. He has been vice rector since 2019.
He never abandoned music or piano, however, as for him — like many people — music and spirituality are inextricably intertwined.
“There is a strong link between spirituality and music and specifically between the roots of classical music and Catholicism,” Maillet wrote Fishbowl in an email. “Studying passages in Scripture in a meditative way is not that different from spending a lot of time on a musical composition and ‘making it one’s own.’”
Unsurprisingly, Maillet often works classical music into his teaching at St. Mary’s.
“Many parts of the Bible have been set to classical music, beginning with the Creation by Haydn, biblical stories and prophetic literature from the Old Testament in oratorios by Handel or Mendelssohn, the Psalms set by so many composers, the Christmas oratorio and the St. Matthew and St. John Passion by Bach from the New Testament,” Maillet wrote. “I have been known to play recordings of excerpts from these great works when I’m teaching that particular part of the Bible.”
Maillet spent his childhood living in many different parts of the world, given his father was in the Army. He has considered Baltimore home, however, since coming here to study with Fleisher at the Peabody. Stoupel emigrated to France after his time at the conservatory in Moscow, then moved to Berlin in 1990. He keeps an apartment there for spending time in the summer and seeing friends and concerts, but considers Baltimore his home base, declaring, “I love it!”
The program for their April 5 recital at St. Mary’s will include:
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Sonata in D Major, K. 381
- Franz Schubert: Fantasia in F Minor, D. 940, Op. 103
- Gabriel Fauré: Dolly Suite, Op. 56
Following their performance at St. Mary’s, the two pianists will present this program in Berlin during the international Festival “The Last Rose of Summer” in August 2025.
The recital on April 5, 2025, begins at 7:30 p.m., with doors opening at 6:30 p.m. Ticket prices are $28.52 for general admission and $17.85 for students and youth.
To purchase tickets, and for more information, click this link.
St. Mary’s Seminary & University is located at 5400 Roland Ave., Baltimore, MD.
