Pianist Tony Yan Tong Chen Photo: Supplied
Tony Chen is Auckland-born and his teachers here include Jian Liu, Bryan Sayer and Rae de Lisle.
Currently (2020) he’s a student at the Eastman School of Music in New York. He’s supported by Professor Jack Richards and has performed at festivals in Canada, Switzerland and Spain.
Slightly at odds with the title, Tchaikovsky's The Seasons is a collection of twelve short character pieces – each depicting a month of the year. In the score they’re all prefaced with short poetic epigraphs.
Tony Chen plays two movements:
"January", subtitled “At the Fireside”, with an epigraph by Pushkin: “A little corner of peaceful bliss, the night dressed in twilight; the little fire is dying in the fireplace, and the candle has burned out.”
"November", subtitled "Troika". A troika is both a three-horse carriage and a folk dance in which a man dances with two women. November’s epigraph by Nikolay Nekrasov mentions the carriage and is rather dark: “In your loneliness do not look at the road, and do not rush out after the troika. Suppress at once and forever the fear of longing in your heart.” But the music is perhaps more aligned with the dance and is rather light-hearted.
Recorded in the Lewis Eady Showroom, Auckland, 3 October 2020
Engineer/Producer: Tim Dodd
