The Scripps College Department of Music presents a faculty recital with pianist and Professor of music Hao Huang on Sunday, February 18, at 3 p.m. in the Garrison Theater, Scripps College Performing Arts Center. Professor Huang will inaugurate the new Steinway concert grand piano in Garrison Theater with a concert of romantic piano masterworks. The program, Romantic Piano Masterworks, will feature Liszt’s Sonata in B minor, S. 178 and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, please call the Scripps College Department of Music at (909) 607-3266.
Franz Liszt‘s Sonata in B minor (1853), dedicated to Robert Schumann, is widely considered to be his greatest work for the instrument, and one of the seminal works of the romantic piano literature. Writing to the composer, Wagner declared Liszt’s creation “beyond all conception beautiful: great, lovely, deep, and noble.” The sonata has had many champions over the years, and has been performed by pianists such as Claudio Arrau, Alfred Brendel, Sviatislov Richter, and Vladimir Horowitz. This may be because the sonata’s considerable technical and interpretative challenges place it as one of the most difficult and rewarding works a pianist can undertake. As a memorial to friend and artist Victor Hartmann, Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky composed Pictures at an Exhibition (1874) for solo piano. A classic of the virtuoso piano repertoire, this epic work presents such a grand conception that its orchestral potential was soon recognized.
Winner of various prestigious international music awards including the Van Cliburn Piano Award at Interlochen, Professor Hao Huang has gained acclaim in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America. He performed as a featured soloist at the George Enescu International Music Festival and the Barcelona Cultural Olympiad. He has also appeared with the Timisoara “Banatul” Philharmonic, the Brevard Music Center Orchestra, the Music in the Mountains Festival Orchestra, the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, and more. A graduate of Harvard University, the Juilliard School, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook, he is the chair of the department of music and artist-in-residence at Scripps College and head of piano faculty at Claremont Graduate University.