The winners of this year’s Princeton University Orchestra Concerto Competition are:
Myles McKnight ’23, Robin Park ’23, Kimberly Shen ’24 (Beethoven’s Triple Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Piano in C major, Op. 56)
Aster Zhang ’24 (Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major, Op. 107)
Richard Qiu ’23 (Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491)
This year’s competition was judged by Maestro Ignat Solzhenitsyn, Conductor Laureate of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and faculty member at the Curtis Institute of Music. A 1994 winner of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, Maestro Solzhenitsyn maintains an active touring schedule, with recent appearances at the helm of orchestras in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Los Angeles, Montreal, London, Paris, and Russia, where he is also Principal Guest Conductor of the Moscow Symphony Orchestra. Maestro Solzhenitsyn and Princeton University Orchestra (PUO) Conductor Michael Pratt commend this year’s winners for their playing.
Seniors McKnight and Park and junior Shen have been selected to perform Beethoven’s singular Triple Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Piano. In this inventive and ambitious tour-de-force, Beethoven raises this beloved chamber trio of instruments to center-stage as collective soloist to his expressive orchestra.
Junior Aster Zhang will perform Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major. Dating from the years following Stalin’s death, the concerto represents a freer expression of the composer’s compositional voice, replete with dissonances and sarcasm. The final movement’s ironic setting of a musical quote from Stalin’s favorite song, “Suliko,” is one candid example of the style in which Shostakovich was, during these years, more at liberty to indulge.
Senior Richard Qiu will perform Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, a later concerto from the composer’s prolific 1784-1786 years that resulted in an impressive twelve piano concertos, among numerous other works. The concerto is notable for being only the second concerto written in a minor mode up until this moment in Mozart’s career and also for its remarkably intimate character, which is greatly served by the expanded role of the woodwinds in supplementing the dramatic character of the whole.
Performance dates will be announced in the coming weeks.
In Other News

Meet the STEM Majors of Sinfonia
Jan 31, 2023
Twice a week in the Lee Music Performance & Rehearsal Room, the Princeton University Sinfonia gathers to rehearse. Led by director Ruth Ochs, the orchestra is made up of students from all class years, many STEM majors coming from across the University’s myriad of technical disciplines, to enjoy a few hours a week of music and community.

5 Concerts & Recording Releases the Princeton Composition Faculty are Excited About
Jan 14, 2023
We caught up with Nathalie Joachim – Grammy-nominated flutist, composer, and vocalist, 2020 United States Artist Fellow, and co-founder of the critically-acclaimed duo Flutronix – and asked her which five concerts and recording releases she’s excited about this winter.

What Does a Princeton Musicology Faculty Member Have on their Desk?
Dec 21, 2022
What’s on a musicologist’s desk? Jamie Reuland, a scholar of music of the Middle Ages, invited us in for a peek into the method behind the musicology.