LOS ANGELES CHAMBER ORCHESTRA: SHOSTAKOVICH & HAMELIN

LOS ANGELES CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Marc-André Hamelin, PIANO
Yanyan Bao, PIANO

F. MENDELSSOHN-HENSEL: Three pieces for piano, four hands
MARC-ANDRÉ HAMELIN: Piano Quintet
D. SHOSTAKOVICH: Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 57

Composer-virtuoso and frequent LACO collaborator Marc-André Hamelin returns to The Wallis for an afternoon of intimate collaboration and musical conversation. From two pianists at a single keyboard to five musicians in dynamic exchange, the program explores how chamber music creates dialogue across instruments, generations, and time.

One of the most remarkable pianists of our time, Hamelin opens the program with Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel’s Three Pieces for Piano, Four Hands, joined by rising pianist Yanyan Bao, a Colburn Conservatory student quickly emerging as a major young talent. At the heart of the program is Hamelin’s own Piano Quintet, a work that balances formidable virtuosity with inward, searching lyricism as the piano slips in and out of the string texture, leading and dissolving, in a fluid exchange between equals. The evening closes with Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet in G minor, a work of striking emotional range that moves between austerity and exuberance, irony and tenderness, revealing a composer writing with extraordinary expressive force under political constraint.

A can’t-miss afternoon of chamber music at its most intimate and deeply human, where the smallest ensembles give voice to the largest emotions.