Event is Live
Carnegie Hall Presents

Bruce Liu, Piano

Friday, January 24, 2025 8 PM Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Bruce Liu by Christoph Koestlin
After skyrocketing to fame in the International Chopin Piano Competition, Bruce Liu gave his New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall in 2023, a performance that exceeded even the highest of expectations. Liu rewarded the ecstatic and sold-out audience with seven encores—works by Rameau, Chopin, Satie, Liszt, Albéniz, and Kapustin—before calling it an evening. He now returns with an evocative new program that features Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons paired with Earl Wild’s arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Four Swans”; Scriabin’s poetic Fourth Piano Sonata; and one of Prokofiev’s mighty “war sonatas.”

Performers

Bruce Liu, Piano

Program

TCHAIKOVSKY The Seasons

TCHAIKOVSKY "Dance of the Four Swans" from Swan Lake (arr. Wild)

SCRIABIN Piano Sonata No. 4

PROKOFIEV Piano Sonata No. 7 in B-flat Major, Op. 83


Encores:

CHOPIN Waltz in A Minor, Op. 34, No. 2

CHOPIN Waltz in A Minor, Op. posth.

CHOPIN Fantaisie-Impromptu in C-sharp Minor, Op. 66

RAMEAU "Le cyclopes" from Suite in D Major, RCT 3, from Pieces de clavessin avec une methode

JOPLIN "Maple Leaf Rag""

Event Duration

The printed program will last approximately 100 minutes, including one 20-minute intermission. 
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At a Glance

TCHAIKOVSKY  The Seasons, Op. 37a

Although comparatively little-known and seldom heard in the concert hall, this suite of 12 short character pieces—one for each month of the year—is among Tchaikovsky’s most exquisitely crafted creations. When they were first published serially in a Russian music magazine in 1876, each piece was accompanied by a seasonally evocative snippet of poetry, selected by the magazine’s editor with Tchaikovsky’s approval.

 

SCRIABIN  Piano Sonata No. 4 in F-sharp Major, Op. 30

The Fourth Sonata departs from the Lisztian idiom of Scriabin’s earlier piano works. Its two highly compressed movements take less than half as long to play as the four-movement Third Sonata, anticipating the single-span structures of his later works.

 

PROKOFIEV  Piano Sonata No. 7 in B-flat Major, Op. 83

Prokofiev completed his powerful B-flat–Major Sonata in the Soviet Union during some of the darkest days of World War II. Alternatively percussive and tender, the music expresses what pianist Sviatoslav Richter called “the anxiously threatening atmosphere of a world that has lost its balance.”

Bios

Bruce Liu

First prize winner of the 18th International Chopin Piano Competition 2021 in Warsaw, Bruce Liu’s “playing of breathtaking beauty” (BBC Music Magazine) has secured his reputation as one of the most exciting talents of his generation.

As a Focus Artist of the 2024 Rheingau Musik ...

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