The Stone Harp: Er-Hsuan Li, Pianist

TICKETS

April 13, 2024, 7:30 PM – Pianist Er-Hsuan Li, alongside string players from the Boulder Symphony, presents the world premiere performance of John Clay Allen’s The Stone Harp: Concerto for Piano and Strings. This work is paired with Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in a program of dazzling virtuosity and artistry.

This concert features Anna Kallinikos as trumpet soloist and the conductor Renee Gilliland.

About the Program:

The Stone Harp, Allen’s most extensive work to date, is in many ways an autobiographical piece. In the music, the composer grapples with personal questions of faith and organized religion. As the eclectic piece swings stylistically between atmospheric textures, neo-romantic melodies, and chorales that could be at home in any protestant hymnal, one can hear the composer pondering those questions that must characterize all human yearning at one time or another. At the same time, the composer contends with his love-hate relationship with writing for the instrument. Along with the hymn tunes, one can hear a synthesis of the piano that made Allen: Rachmaninoff, Liszt, and Debussy intermingle and resynthesized into a new whole.

Dmitri Shostakovich initially set out to write a concerto for trumpet and orchestra, but soon added a piano to make it a double concerto. As the work progressed, the piano took on a more prominent role, leading the composer to give the piece the label of piano concerto. Regardless, the final form retains the prominent trumpet part. In the concerto, Shostakovich makes groundbreaking use of musical quotation. Throughout, the listener will hear multiple references to Beethoven and Haydn, as well as Austrian and English folk songs. In this sense, the two concertos are alike, referencing and honoring that music that went before.