Xu Shangjun
Itis a very unique experience to perform here. The musicians can easily andnaturally deliver impromptu performances on stage.
The challenging part of Rachmaninov's "Six MusicalMoments" is to present the musical imagery: which demands a cleartransition between images, a swift change of expressions, and a cohesiveoverall presentation. The musical elements are so distinctive that can beeasily broken up if not well managed.
Stravinsky’s "Petruska" piano adaptation is atechnically challenging piece. It requires accurate delivery of many octavesand delicate touches and demands hand agility to express the grotesque andamusing musical image.

Qi Yiduo
Thetwo selected pieces today are strongly related to "life." Adiscerning ear can sense that they are narrating our life from birth toadulthood, our experience of mixed emotions encompassing joy, sadness, love,and the ultimate transcendence from suffering.
Liszt's time-honored masterpiece "Piano Sonata in BMinor" is a precedent for a single-movement sonata. A huge and complexstructure with thought-provoking content and brilliant harmonic changes, thiswork also gives vivid images of characters through the love motif of the devilMephisto and the Margarita, the voice of God and the themes of Faust. The motifof incarnated Mephisto is ubiquitous throughout this piece. The recurrentFaust's theme is more obscure. The performer needs to clearly express thecharacteristics of each theme in the music, to manage the challengingtechniques, and to maintain a good performance, which is a test of mental and physicalstrength.
"Bach-Busoni Chaconne in D Minor" is one of myfavorite pieces. The most challenging part of this piece is a series ofrepeated yet complex varying melodies evolved from an unchanging base line.Busoni’s revision greatly enlarges the sound effect. However, to maintain thepurity, tension and depth of the music through a series of fancy techniques andthe variations of musical is actually a great challenge for the performer.