You need the fingers of a Mélodie Zhao to tackle a work as virtuosic as the piano concerto _“The Yellow River.”_ It contains passages directly inspired by Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky (and even Gershwin!), in an aesthetic halfway between Western classical music and Chinese popular music.
Accompanied by conductor Lin Daye and the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra at Geneva’s Victoria Hall, the Swiss-Chinese pianist displayed astonishing mastery of this concerto. Everything was there: the momentum, the fire, the lyricism.