Saturday, April 7, 8 p.m.
Adler Theatre, 136 East Third Street, Davenport IA
Sunday, April 8, 2 p.m.
Augustana College's Centennial Hall, 3703 Seventh Avenue, Rock Island IL
For the final presentations in the Quad City Symphony Orchestra's 2017-18 Masterworks season, conductor Mark Russell Smith and his gifted musicians celebrate legendary composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in Masterworks VI: Postcards from Russia, a pair of April 7 and 8 concerts featuring showcase performances by 2017's Van Cliburn International Piano Competition Medalist Daniel Hsu.
Characterized by the Philadelphia Inquirer as “ a poet…[with] an expressive edge to his playing that charms, questions, and coaxes,” 20-year-old pianist Hsu captured the bronze medal and prizes for best performance of both commissioned work and chamber music at the 15th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. He was also the first-prize winner of the 2015 CAG Victor Elmaleh Competition and bronze medalist at the 2015 Hamamatsu International Piano Competition, and was praised by the Dallas Morning News for his “impassioned, eloquently detailed” playing and “his natural feeling for the rise and fall of intensity.”
A native of the San Francisco Bay area, Hsu is currently the Richard A. Doran Fellow at the Curtis Institute of Music, and has toured the U.S. with the Verona String Quartet. The pianist has also appeared in recitals at the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, and Gilmore International Keyboard Festival, as well as in concerts in Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York.
In addition to Hsu's tackling of Tchiakovsky's tour de force Piano Concerto No. 1, the Quad City Symphony Orchestra's Masterworks finale will find the ensemble relishing the rich orchestral colors of the Russian composer's famed Waltz from Swan Lake, and the program concluding with Tchaikovsky's bold, victorious, and breathtaking Symphony No. 5.
Tickets to Postcards from Russia are $8-58 at the Adler Theatre on Saturday and $8-39 at Augustana College's Centennial Hall on Sunday, and more information and reservations are available by calling (563)322-7276 or visiting QCSO.org.
