A major piano and cello event promises to take place on October 10 (next Sunday) 7:30 p.m. at the Philamlife Theater wih the first Manila team-up of Chinese-born Australian cellist Li-Wei Qin and Filipino pianist Albert Tiu in an evening of Beethoven, Chopin and Rachmaninoff sonatas.
Li-Wei is a silver medalist in the 11th Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and a first prize winner of the Naumburg Competition in New York while Cebu-born Albert Tiu is a first prize winner in the UNISA International Piano Competition in Pretoria, South Africa and a laureate of international piano competitions in Calgary, Santander and Helsinski. (Li Wei is the next season soloist of the Berlin Philharmonic to replace an ailing Misha Maisky.)
A product of the Juilliard School where he was honed by pianist Jerome Lowenthal, Tiu is also recipient of the 1998 Juilliard William Petscheck Award that led to an acclaimed recital at the Lincoln Center’s AliceTully Hall.
Another classic test of Tiu’s brilliant feast as a chamber musician is the release of the recent album “Beethoven: The Sonatas for Piano and Cello” where he shares equal billing with Li-Wei in what sounds like a breath-taking interpretation of the German master’s sonatas.