Remembrance and Dichotomy | Graduating Student Recital | Hao Ding, piano

“Remembrance and Dichotomy” includes the memory of my personal musical journey —Schumann and Beethoven have both figured strongly in my life in the past year —as well as the dichotomy of intense emotional contrasts in their music. Beethoven’s Sonata, op.109, fully representative of his late work, is dramatic, joyful, tender, violent, exuberant, restless and impulsive. With Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze, on the other hand, we have an early work where dance inspires portraits of Schumann’s self-characterized personalities, Florestan and Eusebius. As for the contemporary works which close the program, we find a looking back to a 19th century dance form with the waltz subjected to a modern lens, the 20th century looking back to an earlier time.