Tuesday 15 October was an afternoon full of live music. With the Admin Hall having hosted the DP Music Recital before lunch, after lunch students from the Guangzhou University School of Music and Dance took the stage.

A year ago the first ‘Guangzhou University Music Recital’ took place at UISG, establishing our relationship with the School of Music and Dance, and we were very excited to welcome Professor Liu back with another fine cohort of piano students this year.

With an hour of music programmed across two halves, the audience of UISG High School Music students were taken on a Western Art Music trip through the European masters: from the Scarlatti keyboard sonatas of the early 18th-century Baroque period, through the Viennese Classicism of an early Beethoven sonata and a Schubert Impromptu.

19th-century Romanticism was represented through an étude and polonaise by Chopin, piano duet waltzes by Brahms and a piano duet arrangement Tchaikovsky’s famous ballet, ‘The Nutcracker’. Russia featured again, as presented through an etude by Scriabin, before we were transported back across Europe to 20th-century France for movements from a Debussy suite.

Our UISG Year 11 DP Music student also joined the recital as a guest, taking the audience out of Europe and across the Atlantic Ocean to New York City, with the jazz-inflected music of Gershwin.

And so the global journey continued into the present day, with a duet for piano and organ by Japanese composer Taro Hakase. A musical connection shrank the Pacific Ocean with Chinese composer Gao Ping’s ‘Dance Fury’, a homage to the Argentine composer, Astor Piazzolla.

It was a pleasure to host Professor Liu and her piano students and we look forward to seeing old friends again and meeting new friends with future recitals connecting Guangzhou University and UISG.

Mr Malcolm Mawhinney 
UISG Head of Performing Arts (K-12)