The Reading Symphony Orchestra will feature pianist Terrence Wilson in a performance of Sergei Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3, Saturday night at 8 in the Santander Performing Arts Center.
The program, conducted by music director Andrew Constantine, will be all-Russian, also including Mikhail Glinka’s “Russlan and Ludmilla” Overture and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 (“Pathetique”).
Growing up in the Bronx, N.Y., Wilson had musical parents, but not in the way you’d expect.
Before he was born, his father was a member of the a cappella doo-wop group the Wilson Brothers. His mother, whose name then was Madelyn Moore, was the lead singer for the girl group Baby Jane and the Rockabyes in the early 1960s.
“They toured and did shows before any of us were born,” said Wilson, the youngest of three children. “They had long since been retired from performing. The only evidence I had was an old 45-rpm record with my mom singing ‘How Much Is That Doggie in the Window.’ “
When Wilson was about 8 or 9, his mother decided to buy an upright piano for their living room. The young boy was instantly fascinated and asked for lessons. A year later he began, and while that was relatively late for a child to begin piano study, he quickly caught up and surpassed other students.
“My early teachers tried to give me a diverse repertoire,” he said. “But what excited me the most was the classical repertoire.”
He remembered hearing the late pianist Arthur Rubinstein playing Frederic Chopin’s Ballade in G minor on the public radio station he was glued to, and he was hooked.
Soon he was collecting cassettes of classical music that he bought at Caldor’s, a discount department store in the Bronx, and absorbed. He also recorded classical music on the radio, complete with his own announcements.
And he also lived for the PBS television specials featuring classical music.
“I don’t think Christmas was as big a holiday for me as a day when there was a ‘Live From Lincoln Center,’ ” he said.
By the time he was 14, Wilson entered the Philadelphia Orchestra Concerto Competition and won. The prize was the opportunity to perform Aram Khachaturian’s Piano Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra in the Academy of Music.
“That really inspired me,” he said. “I kept practicing and studying.”
He wound up studying at the Manhattan School of Music and finally at the Juilliard School, where his teacher was Yoheved Kaplinsky.
Since then, he has received the SONY ES Award for Musical Excellence, an Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Juilliard Petschek Award. In December 2010 he was nominated for a Grammy Award for his recording of Michael Daugherty’s “Deus ex Machina” for Piano and Orchestra.
Wilson said Daugherty is currently working on a composition for solo piano expressly for Wilson.
He has appeared with many major orchestras, including those of Atlanta, Baltimore (where he worked with Constantine), Cincinnati, Dallas, Detroit, Houston and San Francisco, as well as the National Symphony and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. He is also active as a recitalist and chamber musician.
Wilson said the Prokofiev Concerto he will play Saturday night is “one of my favorite piano concertos to play, ever. It encompasses everything that the piano can do in terms of range and color.
“It has parts that are melodious and lyrical, and parts that are bravura and flashy. It’s a brilliantly conceived and orchestrated piece and there’s a visual choreography built into the work that makes it fun to watch.”
Email Susan L. Pena: weekend@readingeagle.com.
