Charles Wang, age 10, is one of the Richmond Festival Concerto Challenge winners performing in Rising Stars 2020. We asked him about music, and his selection of the first movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor.
Can you tell us a bit about your path in music so far?
When I was a little kid, I loved to listen to music very much. Music makes me feel excited. For example, I kept listening to Bizet's opera Carmen. I started to learn piano at age 4, but I didn't like to practise and spent little time on the piano. Then, I stopped learning piano three times because I got tired of practising piano. At age 10, I discovered that I still love to play beautiful pieces, like Debussy's Clair de Lune and Chopin's nocturne in B flat minor. Beethoven's Sonatas make me feel inspired: he is my favourite composer of all time. Now, I love to understand the composer's feelings in order to truly play the piece's emotions correctly.
Have you played with an orchestra before?
No, I have never played with an orchestra before. It is my first time and I'm looking forward to this concert.
How does music relate to other parts of your life, or vice versa?
Music is related to many things that I enjoy. For instance, Drama is linked to music by the emotions the characters express. Literature and movies are also related to music because I can understand more deeply the feelings of the author and writer of the script. Even figure skating is linked to music because the type of music determines how the skater moves and dances. Learning music helps me to be very aware about details, like in math, and encourages me to do better.
What do you love most about your instrument?
The piano has a variety of beautiful sounds and textures that I like most. The pedal is also an important part of the piano to add more suspense or make the piece more decorative and melodic, especially in impressionist music. Also the piano can copy the sounds that instruments of the orchestra can make, so the piano is a special and interesting instrument.
What do you love about the piece of music that you will be performing?
I love the sorrowful feeling of this concerto and the melodic, legato passages. It was written in the late years of Mozart and explains his suffering of constant stress, illness, and his poverty. The concerto begins in a gloomy key of D minor in the dynamic piano that gradually builds up to a full forte. in the development section, the key changes to F major, but never becomes jubilant. The cadenza is very exciting; many composers wrote cadenzas for this concerto, including Beethoven.
Is there something special you think the audience might listen for in your piece?
I would recommend listening to the cadenza. It is very powerful and very unique because it is written by Beethoven. This cadenza is full of surprises and fits perfectly in this gloomy concerto.
Martha Argerich (piano) and Alexandre Rabinovitch with the Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto. This recording features Beethoven’s cadenzas for Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor.
