Word: piano
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...finds Mercer’s piercing voice singing a refrain with just the right amount of poeticism—“Cause they know and so do I / The high road is hard to find”—over an adroitly robotic synth melody. A poignant piano and bass bridge takes the song into a saccharine folk outro that sounds like it could have been lifted directly from a Shins album...
...first piece of the evening, Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, featured the HRO concerto competition winner and internationally distinguished pianist Kenric Tam ’12. With the orchestra’s bold opening and the emergence of the lyrical second theme, beautifully introduced by flautist Irineo C. Cabreros ’13, Tam took to the stage with breathtaking expression. Though the orchestra’s complementation of his performance was not perfect at times, Tam displayed a uniquely sensitive and heart wrenching interpretation of Chopin’s first piano concerto. Especially...
...piece, Music for Orchestra II, to commemorate its composer Leon Kirchner. Kirchner, who passed away last September, was a professor in the music department from 1961 to 1991 and conducted Harvard musicians and orchestras around the world. Though far removed from the romantic lyricism of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No.1, Music for Orchestra II was distinguished in its own right. The fiery piece united the strength of brass, percussion, and the raw chords of the strings, echoing the music of Stravinsky and Schoenberg. The piece was a worthy tribute to Kirchner, who Cortese said...
This energy continued into Francis Poulenc’s Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra in D minor, which featured 2009-10 Concerto Competition Winners Stephanie J. Brinton Parker ’10 and Lindsey R. Brinton ’12, who are sisters. The challenge of piano four hands is daunting for even accomplished pianists, but the sisters complemented each other’s performances both in terms of technique and stylistic expression. The interplay between them was so precise that it was difficult to tell which pianist was playing which phrase, creating a truly seamless piano performance. Though...
BachSoc then presented the highly anticipated premiere of 2009-10 Composition Competition Winner “Nightclub Scenes for Solo Piano and Orchestra,” by Zachary T. Sheets ’13. Though “Nightclub Scenes” fit nicely with the modern sound of Prokofiev and Poulenc, there was a distinctively jazzy, almost sultry feel to Sheets’s composition. Written as “a classically inspired piece with a sense of harmony rooted in jazz,” Sheets delegated the roles of the jazz band’s walking bass, tenor...