Three months ago she was in Japan and soon she’ll perform in Germany and the Netherlands, but on March 12, an internationally renowned, award-winning pianist who began playing as a 4-year-old in Taiwan will share her love of classical piano with Gilroy.
Billed as a “Free intimate piano performance,” Sandra Wright Shen’s concert is the second in a series presented by Dave Dumont, founder of the Steinway Society, manager of the Gilroy Piano Outlet and an accomplished classical pianist in his own right.
Shen has been described as a classical ‘pianist of the first order’ and
a ‘heart-stopping beauty,’ Dumont said in a press release.
“Because of her ability to touch people’s hearts with music, and through her sweet, positive spirit, audiences throughout the world have declared her ‘an angel’”, the press release reads.
The concert begins at 3 p.m. on Sunday, March 12 at the Gilroy Piano Outlet, 8401 Church Street at the corner of Church and Eigleberry streets. Admission requires reservations and an RSVP by March 11 to Dumont at (408) 767-2990.
Shen, 44, will perform German composer Robert Shumann’s Fantasie in C, Opus 17, which is all about love.
The piece is an emotion-packed, musical love letter to Clara Wieck, whose hand Shumann sought against the wishes of her father, his piano teacher. Shumann met her when she was about 12 and they married in 1840 when he was 30 and Clara was 20.
Here is how the website cmuse describes their legendary story:
“The love between Robert Schumann and Clara Wieck Schumann is an endearing story that celebrates their music, muse and marriage. It survived parental disapproval, gossip and feeling uncomfortable in social situations to become one of the great romances in the world of classical music. For Robert and Clara Schumann, the universal language of music was their personal language of love.”
And that love is expressed in the piece in a many ways, including the fact that it’s written in the key of C major, the C standing for Clara, Shen said last week from her home in Los Altos.
The piece is filled with Shumann’s musically “encrypted secret messages” to his muse, she said.
The composition was also daring for its time, according to Shen, a dual US-Taiwan citizen who was born in the island nation.
“No work before it is anything like it in its form and creative use of harmony,” she said, adding, “It really has an incredible spectrum of emotions.”
Shen has appeared at the Kennedy Music Center in Washington, D.C., the Chicago Cultural Center, Monte Carlo Opera House, Granada International Music Festival, Frankfurt Cultural Center in Germany and the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing.
She won first prize in the 2012 International Piano Competition of France. She also won first prizes in the 1997 Hilton Head International Piano Competition, the Mieczyslaw Munz Piano Competition, the Taiwan National Piano Competition, and the Peabody Frances M. Wentz Memorial Prize.
She has recorded 3 CDs, is on the piano faculty at the Brevard Music Festival, was Distinguished Visiting Professor at Furman University and was on the piano faculty at Southern Illinois University.
She is Honorary Advisor for Young Music Foundation and filmed a four-part series titled “The Movements of the Master Pianists” for Hong Kong TV and “Inspiration From Above” for US CreationTV. She also hosted a classical radio program in Taiwan.
