LA Philharmonic’s Power to the People! series picks up again on Tuesday with a solo piano recital by Conrad Tao at Walt Disney Concert Hall. The 25-year-old composer and pianist will be performing selections from his most recent recording American Rage followed by an epic and challenging work for solo piano.
The selections from that recording that he will perform will be Frederic Rzewski’s Which Side Are You On? (based on a protest song from 1931 by Florence Reece) and Aaron Copland’s Piano Sonata. That will be the first half of the program.
The highlight of the evening comes in the second half of the program where Tao will perform Rzweski’s The People Will Never Be Defeated! This work is 60-minutes in length and features Rzweski’s 36 variations of a Chilean protest song of the same name written by Sergio Ortega. This song became famous around the world shortly after its introduction in 1973. Rzweski and Ortega were friends. In 1975 Rzweski composed these variations.
Bryce Morrison in Gramophone called The People Will Never Be Defeated! “among the most politically and musically ambitious of all keyboard epics…Embracing many influences and styles, moving from an accessible abstraction to an alternating sense of triumph and desolation, and alive with requests for improvised cadenzas and optional whistles and shouts (reminders of a world beyond mere cleverness; the reverse of ‘special effects’) Rzewski generously, and unforgettably, gives us a melting-pot of world-wide concern expressed in an ultra-American idiom.”
As a musician Tao is equally comfortable with modern material and the standard classical repertoire. Last year he filled in for Lang Lang and performed Beethoven’s Piano Concerto #1 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Earlier that year he performed in David Lang’s The Loser (a recording of that opera has just been released).
An example of his diverse interests as a pianist and a composer can be found in a concert he will be performing with Anthony de Mare at the 92 Street Y in New York on March 29th. He and de Mare will be performing variations on songs composed by Stephen Sondheim written by contemporary composers. Most of the pieces being performed are world premieres and that includes Tao’s own variation on Move On from Sunday in the Park with George.
It should be noted that de Mare will be performing selections from the Sondheim variations (known as Liaisons: Reimagining Sondheim from the Piano) at Royce Hall on April 25th.
For tickets to Tao’s recital go here.
Photo of Conrad Tao by Kevin Condon (Courtesy of the artist)