Ching-Yun Hu to perform March 22 at Coastal Concerts’ season finale
Coastal Concerts will bring its 15th consecutive season to a dazzling close when Taipei-born pianist Ching-Yun Hu appears in Lewes at 7 p.m., Saturday, March 22. Declared a first-class talent by The Philadelphia Inquirer, she is rapidly gaining worldwide recognition as a deeply probing artist with shimmering technique.
A winner of the 2009 Concert Artists Guild International Competition, Hu captured the top prize and the Audience Favorite Prize at the 12th Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in Tel Aviv.
Since then, Hu’s career has flourished, with acclaimed appearances on five continents: “The Chopin … was played with elegance and flabbergasting fingerwork,” said the New York Concert Review.
Hu’s 2011 debut CD of solo piano music by Chopin won Taiwan’s 2012 Golden Melody Award for Best Classical Album of the Year. Two additional discs followed in 2013. One of those is a recital on CAG Records and Sony Music Taiwan that includes pieces by Granados and Ravel, two composers whose works she will perform at Coastal Concerts.
Hu will open her program with Chopin’s "Sonata No. 2, Op. 35," most famous for its third movement “funeral march” theme. This richly varied and demanding masterwork will be followed by one of the most difficult-to-play compositions ever written for solo piano, Ravel’s “Gaspard de la nuit,” based on three poems depicting an imaginative world of darkness, mystery and beauty.
The second half of the program will feature music from “Goyescas” by Enrique Granados and the “Iberia Suite” by Isaac Albéniz. These two composers, who were friends, helped establish a uniquely Spanish school of modern music that drew inspiration from the seductive melodies and intricate dance rhythms of their native country.
The 7 p.m. concert will take place at wheelchair-accessible Bethel United Methodist Church Hall, Fourth and Market streets, Lewes. Tickets are $30. Ages 10-18, as well as one adult per youth, are admitted free with advance reservations; call 888-212-6458. Also, at the door only, students 19 years and older can purchase discounted tickets for $10 upon presentation of a valid school ID.
For online purchases and more information, go to coastalconcerts.org. Tickets may also be obtained at the door the evening of the performance using all forms of payment or in advance, cash only, at the Lewes Chamber of Commerce and Lewes Gourmet/Puzzles on Front Street.
Coastal Concerts is a nonprofit organization promoting classical music appreciation in central Delmarva. This program is made possible, in part, by a grant from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.
