Friday (6/3) on the Los Angeles Times blog Culture Monster, Rick Schultz writes, “Only after 16-year-old Conrad Tao blazed through Rachmaninoff’s ‘Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini’ with Carl St.Clair and the Pacific Symphony at the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall on Thursday did he confront the obvious: ‘Hi, everybody; I’m not Yuja Wang!’ he said, right before offering a stunning performance of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6 as an encore. It was a charming moment. Tao replaced Wang, a Chinese pianist eight years his senior, after she canceled due to illness. An American from Urbana, Ill., Tao thrilled the Segerstrom audience. In a dashing account of Rachmaninoff’s ‘Rhapsody,’ his attacks were crisp, with rhythmically tricky high-velocity passages cleanly articulated. … Tao avoided sentimentality, his concentration drawing us into the composer’s spare and witty work as few virtuosos of any age can do. The concert began with St.Clair’s moving account of Bohuslav Martinu’s ‘Memorial to Lidice.’ Martinu wrote the piece to honor and mourn the people murdered and displaced by the Nazis in that Czechoslovakian town during World War II. After intermission, the conductor returned with an emotionally intense reading of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5. The performance was one of deep commitment and urgency.”
Posted June 7, 2011
