PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION
International Piano Competition . The youngest contestant , at 19 years old , she also took home the awards for Best Performance of Chamber Music and of a New Work . A Steinway artist , in 2010 she received an Avery Fisher Career Grant .
Yang has performed with the New York Philharmonic , Philadelphia Orchestra , Chicago Symphony Orchestra , San Francisco Symphony , Los Angeles Philharmonic and BBC Philharmonic , among many others , working with such distinguished conductors as James Conlon , Edo de Waart , Manfred Honeck , Lorin Maazel , Leonard Slatkin and Jaap van Zweden . She has appeared in recital at New York ’ s Lincoln Center and Metropolitan Museum , Washington ’ s Kennedy Center , Chicago ’ s Symphony Hall and Zurich ’ s Tonhalle .
In the 2017 – 2018 season , Yang embarks on a series of debuts , collaborations and premieres . Highlights include her debut with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra under Edo de Waart performing Rachmaninoff ’ s Piano Concerto No . 3 in five New Zealand cities ; a performance with the Albany Symphony at the Kennedy Center in Washington , D . C ., featuring works by Michael Torke ( Three Manhattan Bridges , written expressly for Yang and commissioned by the Albany Symphony ) and Joan Tower ( Still / Rapids ); a reunion with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra for three performances of Prokofiev ’ s Piano Concerto No . 3 ; and her first collaboration with Aspen Santa Fe Ballet on a new work for dancers and solo piano choreographed by Jorma Elo , which will receive its world premiere in Aspen this March . Yang also performs alongside the Nashville , Eugene and Santa Rosa symphonies ; the Lexington and Oklahoma City philharmonics ; the Rochester and Reno philharmonic orchestras ; and the Milwaukee , Allentown , Vancouver and Asheville symphony orchestras . She continues her enduring partnership with longtime collaborator , the Alexander String Quartet , with performances of works by Schumann and Brahms in California and New York .
Born in Seoul , South Korea in 1986 , Yang received her first piano lesson from her aunt at age four . In 1997 , she moved to the United States to study in the pre-college division of The Juilliard School . After winning the Philadelphia Orchestra ’ s Greenfield Student Competition , she performed Prokofiev ’ s Third Piano Concerto with that orchestra at just 12 years old . Yang appears in the film In the Heart of Music , a documentary about the 2005 Cliburn Competition .
Joyce Yang last appeared with the BSO in July 2002 , performing Prokofiev ’ s Piano Concerto No . 3 , Mario Venzago , conductor .
About the Concert
DANCES IN THE CANEBRAKES
Florence Price ( orch . William Grant Still )
Born in Little Rock , AR , April 9 , 1887 ; died in Chicago , IL , June 3 , 1953
As both a woman and an African American , Florence Price was a dual pioneer in the world of American classical music at a time when there were formidable obstacles in place . Born and raised in Little Rock , AR , she began playing the piano at four and had her first composition published at 11 . By the time she was 14 , Price had already graduated at the top of her high school class and matriculated at Boston ’ s New England Conservatory . In 1906 , before she was 20 , she had graduated with honors ; nevertheless , during part of her time there , she pretended to be Mexican in order to counter the prejudice against her race .
In 1910 , Price moved to Atlanta , where she became head of the music department at Clark Atlanta University . Upon her marriage , she moved back to Little Rock , but after a series of racial incidents there she and her lawyer husband left for Chicago . There , she became friends with both the writer Langston Hughes and the great African-American contralto Marian Anderson , both of whom had a hand in promoting her composing career . After her Symphony in E Minor won first prize in the Wanamaker Foundation Awards in 1932 , it was selected for performance in June 1933 by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra : the first composition by an African-American woman ever to be played by a major American orchestra .
Price wrote Dances in the Canebrakes as three short piano pieces in 1953 , the last year of her life . They might have been forgotten , but fortunately the famed African-American composer William Grant Still noticed them and gave them wider attention with his colorful arrangement for full orchestra enhanced by percussion and harp . Still had grown up with Price in Little Rock at the turn of the 20 th century .
Dances in the Canebrakes contains three movements : “ Nimble Feet ,” “ Tropical Noon ” and “ Silk Hat and Walking Cane .” Despite her European-oriented classical training , Price typically incorporated quotations or echoes of traditional African-American melodies and dance rhythms in her music . Redolent of African- American rural life in the Deep South , these charming pieces show the influence of classical ragtime in their intricate syncopated patterns .
Instrumentation : Two flutes including piccolo , two oboes , two clarinets including bass clarinet , two bassoons , alto saxophone , three horns , three trumpets , two trombones , timpani , percussion , harp and strings .
PIANO CONCERTO NO . 3 IN C MAJOR
Sergei Prokofiev
Born in Sontsovka , Ukraine , April 23 , 1891 ; died in Moscow , U . S . S . R . March 5 , 1953
When Sergei Prokofiev fled the Russian Revolution to San Francisco in 1918 , he had high hopes that America would be the land of opportunity . American audiences and critics were initially fascinated by this bold young pianist / composer , whom they saw as embodying the proletarian spirit of the new Soviet Union — never mind that he was in reality a refugee . The New York Times gushed : “ His fingers are steel , his wrists steel , his biceps and triceps steel .… He is a tonal steel trust .
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