Piano Recital IV / Claire Huangci

Claire Huangci is one of the leading figures on the contemporary piano scene. She first drew attention to herself by winning the prestigious Géza Anda Competition in Zurich and through further successes at international piano competitions. Her recital today at the Slovak Philharmonic is conceived as a broad dramaturgical arc that connects the European tradition of 19th-century virtuoso piano with the individual voices of female composers, and subsequently moves toward the American repertoire of the 20th century, again with an emphasis on the work of women and the African American context. The program thus creates not only a sequence of stylistically related works, but also a thematic thread in which the piano emerges as an instrument of brilliant representation and poetic introspection—and at the same time as a medium of socially engaged art emphasizing equality.

The virtuoso Fantasie brillante based on motifs from the opera The Marriage of Figaro by Beethoven's pupil Carl Czerny is a piano paraphrase of well-known themes from Mozart's popular opera. Chopin's Ballades are among the iconic works of the Romantic piano repertoire; Ballade No. 1 gained worldwide fame thanks in part to Roman Polanski's film The Pianist. The symphonic works of the first African-American composer, Florence Price, are gaining increasing recognition worldwide. Fantasie Nègre No. 2 combines classical musical form with elements of African-American spirituals. This is followed by a selection of technically extremely demanding transcriptions of songs by George Gershwin, arranged for piano by Earl Wild, one of the last representatives of American Romantic piano performance. And finally, Gershwin's famously well-known Rhapsody in Blue will be performed in a solo version.