Hsin-Yun Huang Viola Recital-Sing for Our Land

This event is sponsored by The Ministry of Culture of Taiwan. Admission is free with $40 suggested donation.

Great art evokes timelessness and reveals universal truths. Throughout history, composers have drawn inspiration from the natural world—from Sibelius’s vast solitude and Tchaikovsky’s sweeping landscapes to Debussy’s changing colors, Steven Mackey’s dramatic terrain, and Chou Wen-Chung’s (周文中) visionary memories. Their works remind us that humanness and nature remain deeply intertwined.

Curated and performed by Hsin-Yun Huang, Sing for Our Land explores this enduring relationship through a series of solo viola pairings. Each juxtaposition illuminates contrasting yet complementary approaches to landscape, emotion, and spirituality, urging listeners to rediscover the profound inspiration that arises from the earth itself.

The program opens with Andrew Norman’s Sabina, a meditation on the quiet radiance of the Basilica of Santa Sabina in Rome. Emerging from near silence, the music expands in color and intensity before dissolving into an ethereal ascent. It is followed by György Ligeti’s Hora Lungă, which inhabits the opposite sonic realm. Rooted in a Hungarian folk song, the piece unfolds on the C string, its microtonal inflections evoking an ancient, earthy resonance. Norman’s celestial textures and Ligeti’s grounded tones form a dialogue between air and earth.

Atar Arad’s Caprice No. 8, inspired by Hindemith’s Sonata Op. 11, No. 4, is paired with the “Lied” from Hindemith’s Sonata Op. 31, No. 4. Together, they explore musical conflict and resolution through contrast and reflection.

Nature returns as the emotional center in Sally Beamish’s That Recent Earth and Shih-Hui Chen’s (陳士惠) Sisila ila ila. Beamish’s elegy on loss finds resonance in Chen’s work, where the viola converses with archival Indigenous recordings from Taiwan. Both pieces speak to disappearance—of people, languages, and the natural world—and to the act of remembrance.

The program continues westward with Adnan Saygun’s Partita for Cello and Kenji Bunch’s Till Next Time, two works rooted in folk and land-inspired traditions. Saygun’s earthy lyricism and Bunch’s resonant scordatura writing evoke the spirit of the soil itself.

The performance concludes with Mozart’s String Duet in G Major, K.423, featuring violinist Shu-Ting Yao. Written for Mozart’s friend Michael Haydn, this duet embodies grace, wit, and clarity—qualities that remind us of music’s power to unite humanity through balance and beauty.

Sing for Our Land invites reflection on the elemental bond between humanity and nature, and on the creative renewal that arises when we listen deeply to the world around us.

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Host or Publisher Rockville Presbyterian Church