“Pathetic Variations” – Trans-Classics XII

To excel in one of the most demanding competitions on the circuit – the Warsaw Chopin Competition – is honourable enough. To do so by outperforming all the other candidates in one of the competition’s “specialities” – the interpretation of a mazurka, an iconic form of Frédéric Chopin’s art – is quite a feat. Of Singaporean origin and trained in the United States, Kate Liu has been awarded with the Olivier Berggruen Prize, joining the ranks of previous awardees Pallavi Mahidhara and Alexandra Dovgan. The Olivier Berggruen Prize was initiated by the passionate music enthusiast and long-standing friend of the Festival who divides his time between New York and Gstaad and currently serves as the Artistic Advisor for Gstaad Menuhin Festival & Academy. The set of variations in Schumann’s Symphonic Studies navigate through nearly every technical challenge the piano has to offer. Moreover, Kate Liu’s programme features the youthful Beethoven in his “Pathétique” as well as his late compositional period by the Opus 109 as a piece already hinting towards the future.