Premiered in Ottawa at the National Arts Center in 2009, Canadian composer Jordan Pal’s concert overture On the Double mixes a contemporary orchestral sound with elements of late Romantic melodic and harmonic inflection. Mixing pentatonic melodies with more tonal-functional pitch organization in the orchestral accompaniment, soloist Li Wang performs the Yellow River Piano Concerto, based on Xiao Xinghai’s Yellow River Cantata. Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade opens with a whole-tone motif depicting the Sultan, followed by a subdominant-oriented ‘once upon a time’ progression similar to Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream—invoking the past-tense narrative time as Scheherazade regales her husband with a thousand and one tales.

Kristian Alexander | conductor
Li Wang | pianist
Daniel Vnukowski | host

7:10 p.m. Prélude: pre-concert recital.
7:20 p.m. Pre-concert talk.

Intermission discussion and Q&A with Li Wang and Daniel Vnukowski.