Tumblebird Contrails (Duration: 12 minutes)
Gabriella Smith

Piano Concerto (Duration: 30 minutes)
Edvard Grieg
Claire Huangci, piano

Intermission

Symphony No. 4, “The Inextinguishable”(Duration: 36 minutes)
Carl August Nielsen

Feel the rush of nature and unrelenting power! Gabriella Smith’s Tumblebird Contrails paints a vivid soundscape of wind, waves, and wild motion. Grieg’s Piano Concerto then soars with breathtaking melodies and virtuosic fire. The evening climaxes with Nielsen’s Symphony No. 4, "The Inextinguishable", a fierce, defiant triumph of resilience and raw orchestral energy. Don’t miss this exhilarating ride!

This concert is generously sponsored by

Program books will be available at the concert. In the meantime, you’re welcome to preview the digital version.

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Go Behind The Music

Watch the 59-minute conversation between Dave Moss and Alex Prior about this concert:

Watch a series of shorts about the concert from the full conversation here:

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Guild Legacy Pre-Concert Talk

6:30pm-7pm on concert night; Doors open at 6pm • Soreng Theater at the Hult Center

Join Music Director Alex Prior and Executive Director Dave Moss for the Guild Legacy Pre-Concert Talk to get the inside scoop on the music you’re about to experience. The talk is included with the cost of your ticket.

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The Artists

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Alex Prior
Conductor

Claire Huangci
Piano Soloist

• About Claire Huangci

  The American pianist Claire Huangci continuously captivates audiences with her “radiant virtuosity, artistic sensitivity, keen interactive sense and subtle auditory dramaturgy” (Salzburger Nachrichten). With an irrepressible curiosity and penchant for unusual repertoire, she proves her versatility with a wide range of repertoire spanning from Bach and Scarlatti via German and Russian romanticism to Bernstein, Amy Beach, and Barber.

  Claire’s 24/25 season was peppered with exciting projects, starting with a new collaboration on Alpha Classics. Following a highly acclaimed Mozart concerto album with the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, she will release an all-American solo disc titled MADE IN USA. 

  Kicking off a string of international orchestral engagements, Claire will return to the Frankfurt Opera and Museum Orchestra, Porto, Iceland, Vorarlberg, Nordwestdeutsche, and Pacific symphony orchestras, and debut with the Basel, Hannover, Bremen, Bochum, and Milwaukee symphonies. In the last seasons, she has been a fixture on the concert circuit presenting an unusual breadth of repertoire and also directing various concertos from the piano in the play-direct tradition. 

  In solo recitals and with international orchestras, Claire Huangci has appeared in some of the most prestigious halls such as Carnegie Hall, Suntory Hall Tokyo, Paris Philharmonie, Frankfurt Alte Oper, Dortmund Konzerthaus, Munich Prinzregententheater, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Berlin Philharmonie, Vienna Konzerthaus, and Salzburg Festspielhaus. She is a welcome guest of renowned festivals including the Lucerne Festival, Rheingau Musik Festival and Klavier Festival Ruhr. Her esteemed musical partners include the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg, Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich, Musikkollegium Winterthur, Munich Chamber Orchestra and Basel Chamber Orchestra, together with Carl St. Clair, Elim Chan, Michael Francis, Howard Griffiths, Pietari Inkinen, Jun Märkl, Cornelius Meister, Sir Roger Norrington, Eva Ollikainen, Alexander Shelley and Mario Venzago.

  Born in Rochester New York, Claire displayed an early penchant for piano and was invited to the White House in 1999. She studied with Gary Graffman and Eleanor Sokoloff at the Curtis Institute of Music before moving to Hannover for further studies with Arie Vardi. She rose to international prominence with top prizes at several major competitions, including European and US Chopin competitions, ARD Music Competition, Geza Anda Competition, and Grand Prix of the Paris Play Direct Academy. Since then, she has led a number of orchestras in various concerto repertoire. Claire is a proud ambassador of the Henle Publishing House, and Artistic Director of the Erbach Kammerkonzerte series. 

Edvard Grieg
Composer

Gabriella Smith

Composer

Watch a conversation between John Adams and Gabriella Smith discussing how nature influences Smith’s music.

Carl Nielsen
Composer