WONDER: Charlie Wu

Nobody remembers the tenth time they heard a great artist. Everybody remembers the first.

In July 2026, aged thirteen, Charlie Wu walked onto the stage of the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall, played one of the hardest piano pieces ever written with the Moscow Philharmonic, and left with the Grand Prix at the Grand Piano Competition. Years earlier, his diploma examiners had already reached for the phrase transcendental virtuosity.

In September, Frankston gets to hand him one of the grandest stages in the repertoire: Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto, whose titanic opening chords are, for so many, their first encounter with a musical force of nature: the piano taking on an orchestra.

This thread runs through the afternoon, in a programme Artistic Director Thaddeus Huang built from stories of wonder. Elena Kats-Chernin's Big Rhap started as a treasured memory of her mother playing Liszt's blazing Hungarian Rhapsody at home in Russia. Closer to home, Peninsula composer Dani Maree Ashmore's Beyond the Bridge sees its world premiere, unfolding with something more intimate: the warm, cinematic sweep of enduring love.

Respighi's Pines of Rome closes the season, tracing the ancient trees of the eternal city from hushed twilight to blazing dawn – the wondrous endurance of civilisation itself rendered in colossal sound by the Frankston Symphony Orchestra.

ARTISTS

CHARLIE WU Piano

THADDEUS HUANG Conductor

PROGRAM

Elena KATS-CHERNIN Big Rhap

TCHAIKOVSKY Piano Concerto No. 1

Dani Maree ASHMORE Beyond the Bridge (Premiere)

RESPIGHI Pines of Rome

FSO 60th Anniversary Season • IGNITE 24 Apr • SOAR 20 Jun • WONDER 26 Sep