Two young pianists, Tang Xiaoshu and Wang Chenzhou, study at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music under Professor Zhe Tang. He is one of the most celebrated Chinese educators and a jury member of numerous international competitions. Both the pianists, in spite of their young age, have already won a number of awards at several national and international music competitions. They will present two large-scale piano concertos at the second East Meets West concert.
Tang Xiaoshu will perform the Yellow River Piano Concerto. The piece has an unusual history. The concerto is based on the eponymous cantata, which was written by composer Xian Xinghai in 1939. Xian Xinghai was inspired by the patriotic sentiment during the Sino-Japanese War. In 1969, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, Western music was forbidden in China, while revolutionary songs quickly grew more and more popular. The cantata was then reworked into a piano concert with all the revolutionary anthems and songs intact. In accordance with the collective-labour ideology, the work was carried out by six composers led by pianist Yin Chengzong, a prize-winner at the International Tchaikovsky Competition. Forgotten after the Cultural Revolution, the Yellow River surged in popularity later on. Nowadays it has lost its ideological subtext (celebration of Chinese people’s fighting spirit), but stills remains a good example of virtuoso piano music with prominent Chinese spirit.
Wang Chenzhou will play solo in Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. The concerto is among the most popular pieces of this genre in Russia and worldwide. Its performance history counts more than a hundred years and can be traced back to the time the composer himself played the piece at the premiere. Thanks to dozens of recordings and many live performances, modern audiences know almost every single chord of the concerto. While only very experienced musicians could tackle the concerto in the past, now young, even very young, musicians with their technical brilliance can marvelously perform the concerto.
Vladimir Khavrov
