Music
Uncharted repertoire, and the operas that resist the piano.
Three phases
- 2008 – 2019
Acquisition
Lessons from age eight with a teacher who lived next door, the ARCT at thirteen, first prizes at the Canadian Music Competition, the OSM Competition and the Seattle International, and concertos by Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev and Brahms. A climb through the canon as far as Gaspard de la nuit, the Hammerklavier and Islamey.
- 2020 – 2023
Saturation
Medtner first, then Feinberg, Roslavets, Ives, Szymanowski and Sorabji: music so dense that it is almost never performed. Recorded for the channel, ending at the four hours of Opus Clavicembalisticum.
- 2024 –
Recalibration
The ear that came back is not the ear that left. Puccini, Strauss, Bruckner and Shostakovich return, and the reductions carry their scores into two hands.
Constructed, not declared
Eric is drawn to music whose feeling the listener has to assemble from harmony, counterpoint and texture, rather than music that announces it with a hammer blow, an apotheosis or a triumphant cadence.
Complexity matters only when it does that work: it keeps a feeling from arriving ready-made, so that it is inhabited rather than visited.
The same rule governs the reductions: the piano never states a melody over a simplified accompaniment. The feeling is rebuilt from the full texture.
Six who never leave
- Bach
- Schubert
- Chopin
- Scriabin
- Medtner
- Prokofiev
Featured recording
About this recording
Played from Eric's own solo-piano transcription of the full movement.
Bruckner — Symphony No. 8, III. Adagio
Reduction and performance by Eric Xi Xin Liang
The reductions
The piano is treated not as a substitute for the orchestra but as a medium that can reproduce the score as faithfully as two hands allow. Figurations stay figurations, tremolos stay tremolos, and the vocal lines are folded into the texture.
Published on IMSLP and here under CC BY-SA 4.0: free to play, record and share with attribution.
- Entries
- 41
- Opera
- 12
- Symphony
- 17
- String quartet
- 11
Notices
“It's good to be able to hear Sorabji in a much more accurate realization than what we're accustomed to.”
“What an extraordinary achievement… I think everything works beautifully.”
“You definitely seem to have the drive and the intellect to achieve something significant.”
Praise has also come from fellow Canadian pianists Tony Yike Yang (5th Prize, 2015 International Chopin Competition) and Jaeden Izik-Dzurko (Leeds International Piano Competition laureate).