Classical Music | Piano Music

Johann Sebastian Bach

Italian concerto, BWV 971 Play Play

Hilda Huang

Piano

Recorded on 11/06/2019, uploaded on 04/02/2020

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Italian Concerto, BWV 971 Bach

Sarabande from Partita in B-Flat Major, BWV 825 Bach

Adagio in B minor, K. 540 Mozart

Piano Sonata No. 24 in F-Sharp Major, Op. 78 Beethoven

What do you feel when you listen to music? When I listen to music, I experience a version of myself that is larger than what I already know. In possessing the motion of my feelings, music reveals clarity in my senses that betray a ferocious urgency to create. For me, the experience of listening is a call to being, structured by the flow of the music that I hear.

It is a great privilege for the musician to construct the order of things. By doing so, the musician possesses the singular power to inspire the feeling of stopping time, because music itself contains the passage of time. This program is constructed to facilitate such an experience, with the principle divide between the Sarabande and the Mozart Adagio producing symmetrical halves, unified by their mirrored key relationships and narrative arcs. In constructing this flow into the program, the performer is free to explore the potential of the moment, because she trusts it exists within the flow of the music.

Each of the pieces you hear today played a seminal role in my musical development. For example, I first learned the Italian Concerto on the harpsichord, which catalyzed my conception of what the modern piano is sonically capable of in any particular moment. The Beethoven Op. 78 Sonata does not come naturally to me at all, and requires me to create the second element of the flow of things, which is the motion of music. Dame Myra Hess was a master of these crafts, and I especially admire her recordings of works by Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. When I listen to her recordings, I feel serene, consumed by passionate emotion. What do you feel? Notes by Hilda Huang