Conrad Tao

The Orange County Register • December 4, 2015

Threes are the charm for Pacific Symphony BY TIMOTHY MANGAN

Conrad Tao was back. Pacific Symphony audiences were introduced to the pianist (and composer) back in 2011, when he substituted for an indisposed Yuja Wang. He was 16 then, and not very well known, and took everyone by pleasant surprise. He’s returned a couple times since and there he was again, Thursday night in Segerstrom Concert Hall, 21 and bearded and stylishly dressed now, but still with a friendly, glad-to-be-here stage deportment. His vehicle was Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3, a piece he’s been playing for almost a decade already, he said. It is, a famously spiky, muscular and percussive work, written for a virtuoso to do his zing. Tao hunkered down and went at it like a determined demon. The allegro tempos were taken at racing speed, even faster than usual. The phrases all snapped, held taut, wound up and then cracked like a whip. Even the dreamy passages in the slow movement had a certain firmness, as if Tao (and by extension Prokofiev) were saying, “This isn’t Rachmaninoff anymore.” Throughout, the playing was clean and dry, pointed and hammered, but never flashy. This was Prokofiev’s Third dispatched through gritted teeth. Carl St.Clair and the orchestra supported him acrobatically, but with too much sound at times, covering Tao’s minutia. Nevertheless, it was an exciting performance and in response to the ovation Tao offered an encore. This was very likely the first time that the ultra-thorny music of Elliott Carter (1908-2012) was played in Segerstrom Concert Hall. Tao took a chance with “Caténaires,” written by Carter in his late 90s and which sounds like a blistering atonal jazz solo on steroids. But he played it with such aggression and exactitude and rapidity that he put it across and looked pleased at the applause. He’ll have to give us a Chopin nocturne next time. Better yet, now that he’s become an old friend here, we should get the opportunity to here some of Tao’s own music. I see that he has recently premiered a piece, critically lauded, called “An Adjustment,” for piano, chamber orchestra and electronics. Thursday’s concert was captured by several cameras placed variously around the hall and projected on a large screen above the stage. St.Clair presented it as an “experiment” and an effort to allow everyone to better see what was going on in the performance. “First do no harm” ought to be the oath of such experiments and this one did none. Viewers saw Tao’s fingers flying, St.Clair head on, and various orchestral musicians at work at their important moments in the scores. In short, the images aided the ears. After intermission, St.Clair and the orchestra turned to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, “Eroica,” which, if Google is correct, they haven’t performed together since 2006.

Conrad Tao The Orange County Register ● December 4, 2015 Page 2 It was a nicely calculated and well articulated account. St.Clair reduced the string section a smidgen, making the orchestra closer in size to the ones Beethoven knew. This paid dividends in agile movement and greater clarity of texture. The opening Allegro con brio proved swift and rugged, well motivated but also a little aloft, dancing on air. The Funeral march was aptly dispatched with a steady gate, and the conductor enforced rhythmic point. One felt that the scherzo (marked allegro vivace) was taken at too easy a pace, but certainly the mechanics were nicely unveiled, as was the intricate counterpoint in the finale. St.Clair remained an avid coaxer for the entire performance; he could and did pull out trenchant details in the score. He prefaced the “Eroica” with a talk about it, some seven minutes long by this reviewer’s watch and a few too many by his lights.

Conrad Tao

Cleveland Classical • November 24, 2015

Tuesday Musical: pianist Conrad Tao at E.J. Thomas Hall BY DANIEL HATHAWAY

Replicating in concert form the format he developed for his recent CD, Pictures, the 21-year-old piano phenomenon Conrad Tao walked his audience through two musical galleries on Wednesday evening, November 18. The second half of Tuesday Musical’s Margaret Baxtresser Annual Piano Concert had already been curated by Modest Mussorgsky, who used paintings by Victor Hartmann to inspire his popular suite Pictures at an Exhibition. Tao hung the exhibit in the first half of the concert himself, placing strikingly different pieces by David Lang, Johann Sebastian Bach, Elliott Carter, Julia Wolfe, and Sergei Rachmaninoff side by side on a virtual wall, allowing them to talk amongst themselves. In an interview with this publication, Conrad Tao said, “I shape my playlists by putting pieces next to each other that work together, but in surprising ways. What I love about juxtaposition is that the possibility of friction is embedded inside it. For me friction is potentially more generative than some sort of easy fusion.” Describing his selection of works to the audience at E.J. Thomas Hall in Akron on Tuesday evening, he noted, “It’s painfully eclectic. I take full responsibility.” With the help of his incisive intellect and total command of the keyboard, Tao made that gallery tour a compelling if sometimes mystifying experience. At the entrance and exit were two of Lang’s Eight Memory Pieces, “cage” and “wed,” the first an homage to John Cage with a repeating, eight-figure rhythm, the second an essay in polyrhythmic counterpoint. (The other six pieces have such titles as “spartan arcs,” “diet coke,” and “wiggle.”) Tao gave Bach’s Toccata in f-sharp a dramatically rhetorical performance, contrasting fantastical passages with playful fugues, then leapt directly into Elliott Carter’s Two Thoughts About the Piano. That composer’s musings are usually complex and knotty, and “Intermittences” and “Caténaires,” written when he was 99, are no exception. The first, dedicated to Peter Serkin, is heavy on dissonance and contrasts. The second, dedicated to Pierre-Laurent Aimard, is in the form of a chain, described by Carter as “a one-line piece with no chords.” Before Tao played it — with astonishing fluency — he characterized it as “Thelonious Monk run amok.” After the brief and moody respite of Bang On A Can composer Julia Wolfe’s Earring, featuring an insistent high note over lyrical left-hand chords, Tao moved on to a longer work, Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Étude-Tableau in a, Op. 39, No. 2. Painting another kind of picture, Tao gave this brooding scene, fixated on the Dies irae chant, a darkly stunning performance. Bounding back onstage after intermission, Tao brought vast kinetic energy as well as his keen structural insights as a composer to his masterful playing of Mussorgsky’s Pictures. This is a suite that goads many pianists into self-indulgent flights of pianism, but Conrad Tao was a model of control and restraint. His brush strokes were vivid but not ostentatious. Humorous scenes sparkled. The hut of Baba Yaga was drawn with bizarre but not horrific colors, and no pounding or ringing hammers besmirched the grandeur of the Great Gate of Kiev. Toward the end of his uncannily flawless performance, Tao prominently missed a single left hand octave, as if to prove he was human after all.

Conrad Tao Cleveland Classical ● November 24, 2015 Page 2 After being called back several times, Conrad Tao noted that this had been a “stressful” program, but that he would give the crowd a little something extra. That turned out to be the last movement of Prokofiev’s seventh sonata, a lengthy, fierce toccata that only a 21-year-old would think of dashing off at that point. It was spectacular.

Conrad Tao

Pittsburgh Post Gazette • November 2, 2015

Pianist captures Gershwin's charisma in Pittsburgh Symphony debut BY ELIZABETH BLOOM

In lieu of its usual composer of the year program, this season the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra is presenting four different composers, each of whom is also a performer. On Friday night at Heinz Hall, Conrad Tao played a concerto by a different composer — George Gershwin — on a program that also included the symphony’s performance of his orchestral work, “Pangu.” At 21, Mr. Tao has already performed with an impressive roster of orchestras, including the major symphonies in Dallas, Baltimore, Toronto and Detroit. Friday was his local debut. His interpretation of Gershwin’s Concerto in F served as the highlight of the program, conducted by former PSO principal guest conductor Leonard Slatkin. Mr. Tao’s pitch-perfect interpretation seemed to ooze the spirit of 1920s New York — which was fitting for a work that Gershwin initially called the “New York Concerto.” Mr. Tao leaned heavily on the work’s intrinsic syncopated character, which he punched out with an in-your-face, American candor (the first-movement duet with slapstick comes to mind). But he also displayed a lustrous tone and nimble technique. There were a few loose screws in the ensemble playing, which was loud compared to the soloist in the first movement. The concert began on his compositional side, with Mr. Tao’s “Pangu,” a short piece for pairs of woodwinds, horns, trumpets, trombones, timpani, percussion and strings. The 2012 work conveys a Chinese creation myth involving the titular Pangu, who divided heaven and Earth from the egg he had slept in for 18,000 years. It opened with undulating, quasi-minimalist textures, over which free melodic ideas floated and emerged. On a first listen, the piece had intriguing elements, but it struck me as cinematic. Strauss’ “Symphonia Domestica,” a tone poem that details a day in the life of Richard Strauss’ family, was an odd departure from the first half. But that transition was softened by Mr. Slatkin, who led the audience in a brief discussion of the main themes of the work, which depict Strauss, his wife and his son, using the orchestra to show and tell. Subsequently, the conductor’s well-proportioned, restrained interpretation emphasized the miniature scenes of this sprawling portrait. By the end, it had exploded into Strauss’ full grandeur, although that brilliance was wanting earlier in the performance. David Coucheron of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra served as guest concertmaster.

Conrad Tao

Trib Live • October 31, 2015

America stars in composer's thrilling music BY MARK KANNY

The sonorous allure of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra under guest conductor Leonard Slatkin was equally applicable to American and German composers at Friday night's concert at Heinz Hall. Conrad Tao was the star of the first half in his personas as composer and pianist. Born in Illinois to Chinese immigrant parents, Tao moved with them to New York City when he was 9 and began studying at the Juilliard School. The composer was 18 when he wrote “Pangu,” a seven-minute tone poem inspired by an ancient Chinese creation myth. It is vivid music, effectively scored, which sounds thoroughly American and was persuasively performed by Slatkin and the orchestra. Nothing is more American or more New York than George Gershwin, whose Piano Concerto received a stunning performance Friday night. It was easy to hear why demands on Tao's time as a performer are cutting in on his time as a composer. This was far more than a virtuoso performance. It was not only thrillingly rhythmical, but extraordinarily sensitive in lyrical passages without being sentimental. Slatkin was, as so often in the past, an ideal Gershwin interpreter. Time and again he found fresh accents for often overlooked details. The trumpet solo that opens the second movement was played with perfect style and conviction by Charles Lirette. Tao's encore was Elliott Carter's “Catenaires” in a stunningly high-energy performance, the first Carter performance at Heinz Hall in many years. After the intermission, Slatkin gave an excellent and simple spoken introduction to Richard Strauss' lengthy “Sinfonia domestica,” showing the melodic elements representing the composer, his wife and their child. The piece is a feast for the ear, ingeniously constructed and beautifully scored. Slatkin led an excellent performance, closely attentive to be sensitive and heartfelt, as well as grandiose and vigorous as the music turns family life into a concert drama. Prior to the concert, members of the bass section of the orchestra came to the front of the stage to remember their colleague, Don Evans, a Brookline native who died Tuesday.

Conrad Tao

Seen And Heard International • September 22, 2015

Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia Presents a Dazzling New Talent BY BERNARD JACOBSON

It is almost galling to realize this, but the program that opened the Kimmel Center’s 2015-2016 concert offerings may very possibly end up as the most thrilling concert I shall have attended all season. There are concerts that fall short of expectation. The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia’s first concert of the season was of the diametrically opposite character. I had no idea in advance what to expect. What I experienced in the reality was the advent of a dazzling new talent, one that showed every promise of going on, both as composer and as pianist, to be a dominant figure in the 21st century’s musical landscape. Conrad Tao, who was born in Urbana, Illinois, and studies piano with Yoheved Kaplinsky at Juilliard and composition with Christopher Theofanidis of Yale, is just 21 years old. Yet everything about him—his pianism, his approach to composition, his undemonstratively charming platform demeanor—already bespeaks maturity. After a propitious beginning to the evening’s proceedings—the orchestra played Delibes’s graceful set of antiquarian dances with exceptional polish and panache—Tao gave us the world premiere (actually the second of two performances on successive days) of An Adjustment, a Chamber Orchestra commission of essentially piano-concerto character. Its title apparently alludes to the music’s role in dealing with a period of depression in the composer’s young life, from which he seems to have successfully emerged. The piece plays for about 30 minutes, and is laid out in two movements, each in two sections. That design, you may notice, recalls the formal structure of Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto—but Tao has his own reasons, and his new work, in my judgement, need fear nothing from comparison with one of the 20th century’s accepted classics. The prevailing impression left by the piece is of a fearlessly up-to-date musical language, situated somewhere between tonal and atonal elements, sometimes astringent but often sensuously luxuriant in sound. Rather like the great Xenakis, Tao is a composer whose recourse to contemporary techniques serves not to conceal but rather to illuminate by contrast an underlying vein of rich romanticism. With all the uncompromising vehemence of many passages in the piece, it also features some richly expressive string textures, and moments, like the well-judged chordal writing for the horns in the big climax near the end, that penetrate the orchestral textures very effectively. The piano part, too, embraces lyrical delicacy as well as emphatic declamation. An Adjustment earns its “concerto” subtitle not from any specific reference to familiar classical or romantic formal devices, but from the sheer force of personality that the solo part exerts over the contribution of a by-no-means damped-down orchestral complement. There is also a pre-recorded electronic track, which, without being too obtrusive, supplied a welcome sonorous underpinning to the solo and orchestral textures; it might even not be needed in large-orchestra performances with more double-bass players than the Chamber Orchestra’s accomplished two. Impeccably partnered by music director Dirk Brossé and an evidently enthusiastic orchestra, Tao unfurled a fearsome range of pianistic technique and expressive freedom. Returning after intermission, he showed himself equally at home in Saint-Saëns’s Second Piano Concerto, which emerged from this performance sounding at once stronger in conception and more beguiling in manner than ever. As notable as the way Tao ranged from firm

Conrad Tao Seen And Heard International Page 2 classical restraint to warm emotion, coruscating brilliance, and a delightful flexibility of rhythm was his ability to take a seemingly prosaic accompaniment, as at the second theme of the scherzando second movement, and make it dance; I’d love to hear what he would do with the cheeky left-hand part in the finale of Mozart’s A-major Concerto, K. 488. What is really galling it to realize that, at my advanced age, I cannot realistically look forward to a long acquaintance with Conrad Tao’s achievements as composer or pianist. But I can declare with confidence that, barring some unforeseen reverse (and gifted artists do sometimes lose their way), my younger readers will be enjoying his work—and his works—for a long time to come.

Conrad Tao

Philly.com • September 22, 2015

Review: A 'screen test' for Chamber Orchestra BY PETER DOBRIN

Someday, if the current trend continues, technology addicts will skip all this handheld nonsense and just have cellphones implanted directly in their brains. Until then, arts groups will continue looking for ways to integrate technology into the concert experience, like Sunday afternoon's premiere at the Kimmel of a new work for piano, chamber orchestra, and iGadgets. Conrad Tao's An Adjustment, which opened the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia's 51st season, did not succumb to technology for its own sake. In fact, the electronic sounds he controlled from his screens dropped into the piece only in the most judicious way. The focus was on the interplay between the orchestra and Tao's Steinway, and any compositional magic - there was plenty - happened the old-fashioned way. Each of the program's three works had a foot in two different eras. Léo Delibes' Le Roi s'amuse, Airs de Danse dans le Style Ancien layered standard orchestrations on old tunes that music director Dirk Brossé said reminded him of 16th-century composer Tielman Susato. The great pleasure in the Perelman was being right on top of the ensemble, to hear a kind of refined unity I don't recall this group having the last time I heard it live (radio can deceive). Elsewhere, the cross-era connections rang even more clearly. Tao was also soloist in the Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, which one wag noted starts with Bach and ends with Offenbach. He was a stunning soloist, but specifically so because he kept his monstrous technique on a leash. At age 21, rather than flaunting it, he used it for sincerity and wit - waiting a split second in certain entrances for a flash of humor, or holding back for emphasis. The opening was moving, and the way he paced mounting intensity in the last minutes uncovered the best in this work, but also mirrored the end of his own new concerto. It's perhaps too much to think of An Adjustment as a companion piece to the Saint-Saëns, but they do share contours like the lurching dialogue of orchestra and soloist at the start, and the traversal of bleak territory on the way to an incredible release (an adjustment in medication, perhaps, as Tao writes that the piece is partly about depression). If Saint-Saëns touched on two eras, Tao integrated in the most imaginative way the current style of spiritual post-Romanticism and '90s techno club music. The electronic element was a clever manipulation of beats fed through two speakers on stage - clever not because it suggested humor or irony, but because it extended the impact of the orchestral texture. Cultural bridges were everywhere, but everywhere they elided naturally. The uneasy opening movement gave way to a subtle conversation that worked through despair, a realm both beautiful and creepy, a radiant climax and a brief stopover at jazz before ending in a haze of electronic-acoustical ecstasy.

Conrad Tao

Knoxville Mercury • March 23, 2015

A young soloist and guest conductor lead KSO to an emotional performance BY ALAN SHERROD

It is difficult to pick a single emotion when confronted with a pianist like Conrad Tao. “Amazement” could be one—the 20-year-old pianist, who appeared with the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra last weekend in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25 in C Major, has leaped from being a child prodigy into the rarefied world of adult performers possessing an extraordinary degree of musical maturity and inventiveness. “Awe” is not out of the question, either, particularly after his stunningly explosive, almost frightening, mad tear through the third movement of Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 7 as an encore on Friday. On the other hand, “total admiration” applies, too, as it does to any concert soloist who can confidently own the occasion with a pair of skinny jeans and a muted red shirt. However, I’m going with a more down to earth “exuberant enchantment,” for Tao’s seemingly innate storytelling ability, which invested each Mozartian phrase with a refreshing twist and a perfect reason for existing. Perhaps because of Tao’s parallel educational track as a contemporary composer, he appeared dedicated—unconsciously, at least—to turning the piano into its own orchestra of sorts. In the slow Andante movement, he seemed to absorb and reflect the flavor of the woodwinds that provide much of the descriptive atmosphere. By the movement’s close and into the finale, Tao’s piano echoed the stream of lyricism of the violins. Tao did not shy away from percussion, either, whether it was from notated punctuation or from a delightfully uninhibited pedal foot. The guest conductor for the evening, 31-year-old James Feddeck, proved to be a wise leader with style, substance, and control beyond his years. In addition to recent notable guest-conductor gigs, Feddeck’s resumé already includes assistant conductor positions with the Cleveland Orchestra and the Memphis Symphony Orchestra. Together, conductor, soloist, and orchestra turned in a performance in the Mozart concerto that was exceedingly fresh, bright, articulate, and attention-grabbing. This is indeed an accomplishment in a work that features a complex and ingenious textural sophistication instead of the achingly poignant and memorable melodies found in some of the composer’s earlier concertos. We shouldn’t overlook the age-related connections of the evening’s program itself. Feddeck opened the concert with Rossini’s last overture, the familiar Overture to William Tell, written at age 37, before his 40-year retirement from opera. At the same time William Tell was getting its premiere in August 1829, 20-year-old Felix Mendelssohn was touring Scotland, acquiring inspiration for his “Scottish” Symphony, the concluding work on the program. However, it took Mendelssohn almost 13 more years before his “Scottish” would see the light of day. Chronologically, the “Scottish” Symphony was the last of five Mendelssohn composed, although it bears the title of Symphony No. 3 in A Minor. By the time of its premiere, in 1842, Wagner and Verdi were at the beginning of their operatic careers, Donizetti was at the end of his, and Romanticism was lurching past Beethoven into the mid-

Conrad Tao

Salt Lake Tribune • March 06, 2015

Utah Symphony, Conrad Tao gives a concert to please emperors and commoners alike BY CATHERINE REESE NEWTON

It was an egalitarian evening at Abravanel Hall on Friday, when an emperor sat comfortably between two common men. Pianist Conrad Tao continued his string of impressive guest appearances with the Utah Symphony, filling in on two days' notice for an ailing André Watts to play Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 ("Emperor"). (His five-season streak, which now includes three late substitutions, is all the more impressive considering he is 20 years old.) Tao played the "Emperor" with confidence and verve. Undoubtedly Watts, who at 68 is old enough to be Tao's grandfather, would have given a more reflective reading, but the younger man's turbo-charged performance thrilled the near-capacity crowd. Guest conductor Hugh Wolff's bracing tempos added to the sense of immediacy. Tao responded to the enthusiastic ovation in kind, unleashing a dazzlingly virtuosic rendition of Elliott Carter's "Catenaires" that made the formidable Beethoven seem like a warmup exercise. Aaron Copland's iconic "Fanfare for the Common Man" theme bookended the Beethoven, first in its more familiar setting for brass and percussion and then as part of the final movement of the composer's Third Symphony. Every section of the Utah Symphony shone under Wolff's purposeful direction. Crisp mallet work by the percussionists, clean and forceful lines from the strings, sure-footed navigation of complex passages by the woodwinds and tastefully stentorian brass all came together to create a sound we've come to think of as prototypically American.

Conrad Tao

The Baltimore Sun • October 31, 2014

Pianist Conrad Tao an explosive force in the BSO's latest program BY TIM SMITH

The way young American pianist Conrad Tao sprinted onstage at the Music Center of Strathmore to join the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra on Thursday night raised expectations for dynamic music-making. That's just what he delivered in Shostakovich's daring, often cheeky Piano Concerto No. 1. Tao possesses startling technical elan and an ability to communicate clearly, no matter how thorny a score may become. He also has a hefty dash of charm. Those traits could not be more tailor-made for the maverick Shostakovich work, which finds the composer tweaking the concerto genre and tossing in all sorts of surprises. The first is the presence of a solo trumpet that challenges the keyboard for attention; the rest of the orchestration calls only for strings. Then there is the swing between the wild and crazy comedy of the outer movements and the exceptionally sober, poignant musings in the middle. Think Marx Brothers movie -- with one by Ingmar Bergman popping up halfway through. To all of this, the informally attired Tao brought remarkable spontaneity and colorful phrasing. And even in the most raucous, jazzy portions of the finale, he managed to avoid a clangy tone. There was always musicality, not just virtuosity, at every turn. BSO principal trumpet Andrew Balio was his usual unflappable, pearly-toned self, sculpting the bittersweet, muted phrases at the close of the Lento movement with particular sensitivity. Guest conductor Hannu Lintu offered attentive partnering and drew a stylish response from the ensemble. Tao happily offered an encore, tearing into the thunderous finale of Prokofiev's Piano Sonata No. 7 with a ferocity and velocity that seemed in danger of causing self-combustion. Two orchestral greatest hits provided bookends for the program. Lintu got the evening started with a taut account of Beethoven's "Leonore" Overture No. 3, which showed off the BSO's well-balanced tone and finesse of articulation (the pianissimo shading at the opening proved especially effective). Brahms' open-hearted Symphony No. 2 provided a generally satisfying close. Lintu has been more individualistic and compelling on previous BSO visits, but he had the music unfolding with a natural, often elegant flow. Other than a couple of uneven entrances in the finale, the BSO did cohesive, vibrant work. Philip Munds molded the horn solo in the closing minutes of the first movement with notable eloquence. The woodwind section's warm and supple playing in the third movement was another highlight.

Conrad Tao Knoxville Mercury Page 2 century period of Schumann and Berlioz. In this climate, Mendelssohn emerges as an evoker of images, but one more classical than modern. What marked Feddeck’s intensely satisfying interpretation of the “Scottish” was his ability to understand Mendelssohn’s evocation of images, and to treat them with energy and precision but without even the slightest hint of sentimentality. Repeating phrases were separated by distinctly descriptive dynamics rather than by the artificial lushness of swelling crescendos and decrescendos that would later mark end-of-the-century impressionists. Even the suggestion of a storm in the opening movement shunned the overly dramatic, leaving the audience to feel the wind in their own mind. Textural separation between strings and woodwinds felt more like layers being peeled away than specific entrances and exits. Of course, the Overture to William Tell that opened the concert contains a memorable storm sequence as well, not to mention a gorgeous cello and bass ensemble opening, and an achingly beautiful pastoral dawn featuring the English horn. Sadly, because this rightfully terrific piece of music has been used, abused, degraded, and parodied in everything from commercials to cartoons to TV, one could almost feel the impatience of last weekend’s audience for that ubiquitous “Lone Ranger” finale. Others, this writer included, savored Feddeck’s deliberate attention to the proper pace and details of Rossini’s Alpine references—even without a fiery horse or a single cloud of dust in sight.

Conrad Tao

The Washington Post • October 31, 2014

Memorable night of music-making at Baltimore Symphony's Strathmore Hall BY JOE BANNO

What looked on paper to be a business-as-usual subscription program of standard-repertoire fare, at the Baltimore Symphony’s Strathmore Hall concert on Thursday, emerged as a memorable night of music-making. Young keyboard phenom Conrad Tao commanded the solo part in Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No 1, with playing of assertive virtuosity, razor-sharp articulation, and an embrace of both the rhapsodic and the anarchic in the writing. (In an encore, Tao further displayed his chops by whipping through a scorching rendition of the final movement from Prokofiev’s Seventh Piano Sonata.) BSO principal trumpet Andrew Balio found just the right tone of cool detachment and dry wit in the trumpet figures Shostakovich weaves throughout his concerto as counterpoint to the piano and as sardonic musical commentary. No less arresting than the soloists was conductor Hannu Lintu. Gangly, emotive and idiosyncratic in his physicality on the podium, his sweeping, admirably clear baton technique drew from the orchestra beautifully gauged readings of the concerto, Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No 3 and Brahms’s Second Symphony. His was old-school conducting in the best sense of the term. With a scrupulous ear for instrumental color and blend, and a Karajan-like taste for seamless orchestral texture, Lintu rendered Beethoven’s and Brahms’s musical architecture with crystal clarity, kept phrasing supple and built climaxes organically, to powerful effect. The BSO responded to him with warmly affectionate playing and tremendous concentration. The silken sheen on the upper strings and the burnished tone of the brass choir gave particular satisfaction.

Conrad Tao

Battle Creek Enquirer • October 9, 2014

Battle Creek Symphony brings amazing talent BY MARTIN EGELSTON

Abel Oldsworth, my reticent friend, and I are so grateful for the music of the Battle Creek Symphony. Neither of us are musicians, but we have tried to make classical music part of our life long learning. It enriches our souls and garners appreciation for talented musicians. At the recent concert, Conrad Tao, accompanied by the orchestra and using only his left hand, for 15 minutes, played Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand with varying light and heavy touches and great note accuracy. Then in his encore, he folded in his right hand giving rapid scale runs, with varying shades of color and intensity. It was heartfelt. We were astonished. We struggled to describe what we saw and felt. For a jaw dropping performance, there was pianist Conrad Tao Who one-handed the left-handed Ravel Concerto. Then he let both hands dance In his encore performance, Seemingly playing it "with ten fingers and both elbows."

Conrad Tao

New York Times • September 2, 2014

In performance: Conrad Tao BY MICHAEL COOPER

Conrad Tao, a pianist and a composer, has been on a roll. Last year he produced a new music festival in New York, released his first major-label album, and wrote a piece for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra for the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. This year he will be the artist-in-residence in Dallas, play concerts around the country and the world, and open the New York Youth Symphony’s season Nov. 23 at Carnegie Hall. And he’s only 20. Here he is playing the impassioned final movement of Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 7. “It’s kinetic and scary and exciting,’’ he said just before sitting down at the piano, “but also, I think, extremely harmonically rich.”