Concert Among Friends with Pianists Gloria Cheng and Matthew McCright
Pianists and longtime friends Gloria Cheng and Matthew McCright team up for an evening of new music for solo and four-hand piano.
TicketsGloria Cheng opens tonight's duo-program with the passionate Valsa Choros No. 2 by Brazilian composer Adelaide Pereira da Silva. It will be followed by three short “garlands” for the late Steven Stucky by his colleagues: the late William Kraft, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Judith Weir; and Zhou Long’s colorful evocation of the Tang dynasty legend of the “Nine Bells that ring with Knowledge of the Frost.” The closing work will be Stephen Andrew Taylor’s “Black Smoker,” from his dramatic 30-minute Seven Memorials, a commemoration of endangered realms on our planet.
Matthew McCright performs two of the major works from his upcoming album Hanging By a Thread on the Proper Canary Label. Dorothy Hindman’s work To Spill Oneself Away is a perpetual motion tour-de-force representing the unrelenting expectations of life and loss of identity that cascades across the keyboard with unrelenting drive. This is followed by the epic sweep of Blue Diamonds by Paul Dresher that uses multiple sections that twist and shift the listener with intricate passagework, rhythmic play, shifting meters, and recurring themes much like refracted light on the precious gemstone, often dazzling, until the heroic ending is reached.
Gloria Cheng and Matthew McCright team up for two four-hand works: the spatial dreaminess of David Lang’s Gravity and the robust and earthy Sonatina by Gyorgy Ligeti.