Lucy Tan, Washburn faculty member and concert pianist, performed a solo piano recital featuring work by Beethoven, Chen Y, and Robert Schumann on Friday, Feb. 7 in the White Concert Hall at 7: 30 p.m.
Tan started her musical journey when she made her live WGBH radio debut at the age of 11 on “Morning Pro Musica” with Robert Lurtzema, followed by her concerto debut at the age of 12 with the Brockton Symphony Orchestra. She was previously featured in Chamber Music Amarillo’s concert series.
Tan has presented at many state, regional and national conferences recently and directed the KMTA 2023 state conference. She is a laureate of national and international piano competitions and has performed in renowned music festivals such as Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festivals, Music Academy of the West and Bowdoin International Music Festival.
Tan discussed the importance of conveying the composer’s emotions in performing Schumann’s work.
“The role of emotion is about conveying what the composer was feeling when he was composing pieces,” Tan said. “Keep in mind when he wrote the music he had a certain image and certain type of emotions that he wanted to express. I am just the kind of person who would bring that to life. I think that Schumann in particular, there’s a broad range of emotions, from introversion to sadness to longing for love, happiness, passion, fear, anger and even at the end kind of joy.”
In 2024, Tan was chosen to be a poster presenter at the MTNA National Conference in Atlanta where she talked about cognitive science and practice efficiency; she received the Mary B. Sweet Summer Sabbatical award for research and travel in Boston, Paris, Salzburg and Vienna.
Malakai Fischer, sophomore piano performance major, expressed admiration seeing Tan’s performance and shared his favorite piece.
“Getting to see her perform in a new environment is always inspiring especially for someone who doesn’t get to have that much experience growing up,” Fischer said. “One thing that surprised me was the last piece […], and how much emotion there was behind it. I liked the Beethoven piece. It’s very traditional, lovely to hear and there’s a lot to learn from within itself.”
One of the audience members, Don Cook of Lawrence attended the recital and shared his experience of it and his favorite pieces.
“Beethoven is very familiar, I enjoy that, but the last composition by the Chinese composer was really quite something and I was surprised,” Cook said.
Edited by Stuti Khadka and Morgan Albrecht
