HEAR IT - Humanity's Expressive Artists Reveal & Illuminate Truth

Barry Douglas, Piano TSO Music Director, José Luis Gomez 15 February 2019 -- Tucson, Arizona. Tucson Community Center Music Hall, To call Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto a war horse, is rather an understatement. Though initially rated as garbage by the piano virtuoso, Nikolai Rubinstein, for whom Pyotr had intended the premier, it has long been one of the most popular concertos in the literature. Barry Douglas won over the world performing this work in 1986, capping his Tchaikovsky Piano Competition  Gold Medal . How would he, Maestro José Luis Gomez, and the TSO fare with it, 30+ years later? With flair, power, precision, and delicate moments of introspection. Douglas, steady as a rock in both stage presence and musicality, pressed out the giant musical statements with power and grace. Then immediately, his genius of judgement was on display. The tempo and tone adjustments required to highlight and communicate the precious, less strident solos and lightly acco...

Tonight, Music Director, José Luis Gomez, and the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, dive deep into late 19th century orchestral splendor. This will be the very, VERY long-awaited TSO Premier-- 134 years since its composition! -- of Anton Bruckner's sprawling and storied 7th Symphony. The concert will open, like a raucous, outsized Tucson Rodeo 'Prelude', with superstar cowboy -- er, famed power pianist! -- Barry Douglas, saddling up his Steinway 'D', to ride the Great War Horse, Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto, into a Shootout at the TCC Corral! Irish pianist Barry Douglas, whose career was launched, as he became, in 1986, only the second non-Russian to win the quadrennial Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, has a repertoire forged somewhat in the mold of the great Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter. Douglas wowed the Tchaikovsky Competition judges and audience with his stunning 'Pictures at an Exhibition', by Mussorgsky, which Richter had redefined, an...