Superlatives flow from orchestral reviewers these days almost as effortlessly as beautiful music flows from one of the classical genre’s rising young stars.
Pianist Sean Chen should be able to appreciate that. Away from the keyboard, you can find him at the Scrabble board composing words with wife and Kansas City Symphony first violinist Betty. He’s uncertain that his hobbyist vocabulary quite matches his musical one just yet, though.
“Actually, I wouldn’t want to say I’m very good at any of the board games,” Chen said with a laugh, speaking by phone by from his home in Kansas City, Missouri. “We all spend so much time with electronic devices that when we hang out with people, we want something a little more engaging.”
Engaging — there’s a great word to describe the 29-year-old piano man’s work with ensembles nationwide, including the Columbus Indiana Philharmonic’s season-opening concert in September 2016. Chen returns to town Saturday to play Johannes Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 with the local orchestra at Judson Erne Auditorium. He first played it publicly as a California high school senior with what is now the Thousand Oaks Philharmonic.
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“It’s definitely a piece that pretty much any pianist wants to perform, given the opportunity,” he said.
And, given the fact that Brahms remains Philharmonic Music Director David Bowden’s favorite composer, this weekend should be golden for Chen, who has shared his talent with prominent orchestras in Fort Worth, Texas; Hartford, Connecticut; Indianapolis; Milwaukee; Phoenix; San Diego and other metro areas.
“When we began working together, it was as if we had done so for years,” said Bowden, who last directed Chen on the Brahms’ work a year-and-a-half ago with the Terre Haute Symphony Orchestra that he leads. “There was just excellent chemistry. His extremely expressive approach to making music is very, very close to my own.
“And we just hit it off, and we really love working together.”
Chen’s performance of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in his first Philharmonic appearance wowed Republic freelance reviewer and pianist Henry Upper, associate dean emeritus of Indiana University’s prestigious Jacobs School of Music, still considered among the best nationwide.
Upper labeled the presentation “the most imaginative and compelling performance of the work I have ever heard.”
And yet Chen unabashedly speaks of still learning, still growing, still polishing and still improving. Clearly, that mandates a measure of intensity. But the lighthearted, youthful side of him that Bowden and others have seen firsthand also surfaces in online clips of him improvising a performance of the jazzy, ragtime-oriented Super Mario Odyssey theme.
He laughed about the idea of someday presenting a concert of video game music, which spurred his own composing as a teen.
“I think that would be a lot of fun,” he said.
Beyond touring and the concert stage, he serves as an artist-in-residence at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance, where he teaches, and sometimes joins in on chamber concerts throughout Kansas City. Plus, he handles all elements of his own website at seanchenpiano.com.
When he once thought he might not ever fully make it in the highly competitive classical music world, he thought a computer keyboard could be a better fit and considered following his brothers into the electronic tech field, composing code and such. But those doubts are long gone.
Near the close of his conversation, Chen playfully dismissed a question about who the better musician might be in his household.
“At a certain level,” he said, “it’s not really a question about who’s best. Really, it’s about how your musicality comes through.”
Hmmm. Musicality. That could be a great, longer, double-word score in his next game of Scrabble.
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What: Pianist Sean Chen performing Johannes Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Columbus Indiana Philharmonic. Also on the program are Aaron Copland’s “Letter from Home” and “Appalachian Spring,” which includes the familiar Shaker tune “’Tis a Gift to be Simple.”
When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday.
Where: Judson Erne Auditorium, 1400 25th St. in Columbus.
Tickets: $5 to $50.
Musically speaking: 6:45 p.m. with Philharmonic Music Director David Bowden and Chen.
Information: 812-376-2638 or thecip.org.
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