Jefferson City Symphony Orchestra concert to feature young, acclaimed pianist

The Jefferson City Symphony Orchestra will welcome the winner of its 2016 Piano Concerto Competition to play at its final concert of the season.

As the featured performer, Pianist Xiangyu Zhao will perform “Piano Concerto in D flat major” by Aram Khachaturian at the concert at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Mitchell Auditorium, located at 710 E. Dunklin St., on the Lincoln University campus. He played the same piece for the competition.

Patrick David Clark, Jefferson City Symphony Orchestra music director and conductor, said the musical group is “excited about doing the Khachaturian concerto” piece because it’s not played as frequently as other piano concertos.

“He has a tremendous amount of vitality and passion in his playing ,and that’s why he won the competition,” Clark said. “That’s how he won. It wasn’t the piece that won; it was the way he played.”

Zhao is a first-year doctorate student in the Conservatory of Music and Dance at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

His music journey started at age 4. Traveling to the U.S. in 2008 from China, Zhao earned his bachelor of music degree five years later at the University of Northern Colorado. There, the university’s international department honored him with the Undergraduate Academic Excellence Award.

In addition to his honors from the Jefferson City Symphony Orchestra, Zhao has a long list of other musical accolades. He earned awards at the MTNA piano competition, Steinway music piano concerto competition in Colorado and was a winner of the Concerto-Aria Competition at UMKC.

The orchestra will also perform “The Pines of Rome” by Ottorino Respighi. Clark described it as a “big piece with lots of brass,” and it will use the recently-renovated organ in Mitchell Hall.

Clark’s own work, “Fantasy on Themes of Mussorgsky,” will be performed. He said it’s a “fantastical treatment” of “Pictures of Exhibition” by Modest Mussorgsky, a 19th-century Russian composer.

“It’s very episodic,” he said. “I would call it a subjective experience of ‘Pictures in an Exhibition’ that’s kind of like nostalgic memory.”

Earl Braun, viola player and former faculty member with Lincoln University, also created a piece for the concert, titled “Dramatic Essay.”

“It’s written in a late romantic Wagner-esque style,” Clark said.