For cellist Felix Wang, building a recital program is partly an exercise in exploration: revisiting music he has known for years, rediscovering works he hasn’t performed in some time and finding unexpected connections among them.
That process shapes Wang’s Sept. 4 Blair Master Series recital, where he will explore what he describes as a “Russian-adjacent” program featuring music by Igor Stravinsky, Benjamin Britten and Sergei Rachmaninoff.
Wang, now in his 27th year on the Blair faculty, will be joined by pianist and Blair faculty member Alexa Stier for Stravinsky’s Suite Italienne and Rachmaninoff’s Sonata for Cello and Piano in G Minor, Op. 19. Between them, Wang will perform Britten’s Suite No. 3 for Solo Cello, Op. 87.
While the composers represent Russia and England (and Stravinsky’s suite draws heavily on Italian music) a Russian thread winds through the entire evening.
The program opens with Suite Italienne, drawn largely from music Stravinsky composed for his ballet Pulcinella. Stravinsky looked backward for inspiration, taking melodies associated with 18th-century Italian composers and recasting them in his distinctly 20th-century musical language.
“He borrows these Italian melodies and then he gives them more modern sensibilities,” Wang said, pointing to harmonic changes, shifting meters and the composer’s “spiky, spicy nuances.”
The Russian connection becomes more pronounced in Britten’s Third Suite for Solo Cello, written for legendary Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. Britten incorporated Russian folk melodies and the Russian Orthodox chant for the dead, revealing them gradually throughout the work.
“All along he’s kind of putting them out there and he’s hinting at them and he’s using fragments of them,” Wang said. “You hear the variations first and then you have the themes at the end, so reverse of a typical theme and variations piece where the theme is presented first.”
Exclusive Preview: Felix Wang and Alexa Stier rehearse Rachmaninov’s Sonata for Cello and Piano (in G minor Op. 19).
After intermission, Wang and Stier turn fully toward Russia with Rachmaninoff’s expansive Cello Sonata in G Minor. Written shortly after the composer’s celebrated Second Piano Concerto, the sonata shares some of that work’s sweep and emotional intensity. And places formidable demands on the pianist.
“In some ways, it’s another piano concerto,” Wang said. “I’m a little bit along for the ride, joining as a partner.”
For Wang, the recital also offered an opportunity to return to music he had not performed in years. He last worked seriously on the Stravinsky as a student and had similarly been away from the Rachmaninoff and Britten for some time.
The inspiration to revisit them sometimes came from an especially close source: his own cello students.
“Sometimes I hear my students playing these things and I get a little jealous,” Wang said. “I think, ‘OK, I think I’d like to actually do that.’”
After immersing himself in French repertoire last year, Wang was drawn to exploring another musical language while returning to works that had been waiting for another look.
The three pieces may not initially appear to form an obvious set. But together they trace a Russian musical thread across countries and generations: a Russian composer transforming old Italian melodies, an English composer inspired by a Russian cellist and Russian musical sources, and finally one of the great Russian Romantic works for cello and piano.
For Wang, they also offer something more personal: a chance to rediscover three works that have remained with him across different stages of his career.
* * *
Blair Master Series: Felix Wang with Alexa Stier
Friday, September 4, 2026, 7:30 p.m.
Turner Recital Hall, Vanderbilt Blair School of Music
Tickets: $18.50 | Purchase Tickets