For his final DMA lecture-recital at the Butler School of Music, Yi Xin (DMA ’14) will present the first performance of Augusta Read Thomas’s Cello Concerto No. 3: Legend of the Pheonix in cello and piano reduction form. The concerto was originally premiered by cellist Lynn Harrell, conductor Christoph Eschenbach and the Boston Symphony Orchestra in March 2013.
About Legend of the Pheonix, Augusta Read Thomas writes:
“One might describe Legend of the Phoenix as ‘Scenes with Arias’ with the solo cello as a singing storyteller. Shaped in one long-reaching, continuous arch, the energy flow is often activated by the soloist, who is at the “philosophic center,” beckoning, caressing, and summoning the music’s chain of outgrowths.
“With sparkling, radiant, and capriciously witty atmospheres that celebrate the soloist and orchestra, this concerto is optimistic, clean, colorful, bright, sunny. There exists a wide and spontaneous variety of characters, including: triumphant, in-flight, ever-renewing of energy, graceful, majestic, spacious, pure and clean, playful, spry, jazzy, lively, rhythmic, ever-rising, resonant, and elegantly vibrant.”
Yi’s lecture-recital will take place on Wednesday, December 3, 2014, at 6 PM, in MRH 2.614. Admission is free.
Longhorn Cellos 