Yuzhang Li
6 February @ 12:45 pm – 1:45 pm
Tickets on the door (cash or card). Under 18s and carers go free
Doors open at 12:15 pm
Performers
Notes on the performers
Yuzhang Li
Piano
As a Tillett Artist, Yuzhang Li debuted at the Wigmore Hall and King’s Place shortly after her first UK appearance at the 2021 Leeds Piano Competition. After graduating top of her class at the Central Conservatory in China, she earned a full scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music, where she completed her master’s degree with distinction. Yuzhang now performs actively across the UK and China and has embraced her new role as a researcher, having begun her PhD studies at the Royal Academy of Music.
Her distinctive musical character has gained wide recognition through active participation in competitions such as the Van Cliburn, Leeds, and Hilton Head, as well as top prizes garnered in other competitions such as the Grotrian and Wiesbaden Piano Competition. Her performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra was lauded by Maestro Lang-Lang and reviewed by Shenzhen News as ‘a performance of remarkable composure and maturity, far exceeding our expectations’. Yuzhang has received mentorship under Professor Jinsong Xian, Professor Danwen Wei, Professor Jiajia Shi, and Professor Ian Fountain, and is supervised by Professor Roderick Chadwick.
Programme
Programme notes
Maurice Ravel
Miroirs
- Noctuelles (Night Moths)
- Oiseaux tristes (Sad Birds)
- Une barque sur l’océan (A Boat on the Ocean)
- Alborada del gracioso (Morning Song of the Jester)
- La vallée des cloches (The Valley of Bells)
Miroirs (French for “Mirrors”) is a five-movement suite for solo piano written by French composer Maurice Ravel between 1904 and 1905.[1] First performed by Ricardo Viñes in 1906, Miroirs contains five movements, each dedicated to a fellow member of the French avant-garde artist group Les Apaches.
Source: Wikipedia
Frédéric Chopin
Four Ballades
- Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23
- Ballade No. 2 in F major, Op. 38
- Ballade No. 3 in A♭ major, Op. 47
- Ballade No. 4 in F minor, Op. 52
Frédéric Chopin’s Four Ballades are single-movement pieces for solo piano, composed between 1831 and 1842. They are considered to be some of the most important and challenging pieces in the standard piano repertoire.
Chopin used the term ballade in the sense of a balletic interlude or dance piece, equivalent to the old Italian ballata. However, the term may also have connotations of the medieval heroic ballad, a narrative minstrel song, often of a fantastical character. There are dramatic and dance-like elements in Chopin’s use of the genre, and he is a pioneer of the ballade as an abstract musical form.