Award-winning young pianist plays classics tonight at TC
An award-winning, up-and-coming pianist performs selections by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and others tonight at Texarkana College.
Kwan Yi, a National Federation of Music Clubs honoree for piano, performs at 7:30 p.m. today in the Stilwell Humanities Music Hall. Admission is free but seating is limited.
Yi has studied at the Peabody Institute, Curtis Institute of Music and the Juilliard School. He’s performed at a number impressive venues, including the Kennedy Center’s Opera House, Chicago Symphony Hall and Carnegie Hall’s Isaac Stern Auditorium.
Mary Scott Goode, TC associate professor of music, says the pianist is performing all over the world. The TC Department of Music will partner with the Wednesday Music Club for the concert.
“He is finishing his degree at the moment, but he’s also having an active concert schedule,” Goode said. A National Federation of Music Clubs winner comes to Texarkana annually.
Yi has been lauded, in particular, for the elegance and clarity of his playing.
The night’s program consists of selections by Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Dutilleux and Chopin.
“This is meat-and-potatoes stuff for piano players,” Goode said. “This is excellent, mainstream repertoire.”
“This is meatand-potatoes stuff for piano players. This is excellent, mainstream repertoire.” —Mary Scott Goode
Goode said of the Bach piece, “Bach wrote 24 Preludes and Fugues, one in every major and minor key, so this is the Prelude and Fugue in C minor. When these were written they had just figured out how they were going to tune keyboards.”
Goode said the piece is considered one of the top
selections from the first book of Bach’s preludes and fugues.
The Beethoven piece, Piano Sonata, Op. 7, was written for the piano, not the harpsichord. It’s an early Beethoven sonata with that distinctive “Beethoven sound,” Goode said. “Big dynamics, big range of emotions, a lot of strength in the rhythm.”
The Brahms selection consists of the Fantasies, Op. 116.
“What this is is the entire set of pieces that belong to that opus,” Goode said of these seven pieces. “They’re all marvelous pieces.”
She described them as character pieces, “short, one-mood, one-snapshot type of pieces from the Romantic period that just capture a mood or show you a scene.” They’re brief, intimate works, Goode said.
After a more contemporary piece by Dutilleux (Prelude No. 3, “Le jeu des contraires”), the concert concludes with Chopin’s Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23.
“This is one of the great piano pieces,” Goode said, romantic and fully-developed. “I’ve played this piano piece. It’s a warhorse.” Count Goode as a Chopin fan. “There’s no greater composer for the piano than Chopin,” she said. “There’s some that are as great, but he’s right up there.”
(For more info, contact Mary Scott Goode at mary.goode@ texarkanacollege.edu or 903823-3371 or Jennifer Hackworth at jennifer.hackworth@texarkanacollege.edu or 903-823-3360.)