Aristo Sham in recital: Bach, Ravel, Beethoven

The Aspen Music Festival and School has a long tradition of hosting the winner of the prestigious Van Cliburn International Piano Competition every four years — and in 2025, that means we have the honor of streaming the Aspen debut of Hong Kong virtuoso Aristo Sham, who took home the Gold Medal in May! He arrives in Aspen ready to make a grand statement, performing a selection of the challenging, soulful works that won him acclaim from the competition’s jury and audiences around the world: Ravel’s notoriously demanding triptych Gaspard de la nuit; the Hammerklavier Sonata, perhaps the most difficult and important of all the masterpieces Beethoven composed for solo piano; and two Bach transcriptions by Rachmaninov and Busoni that maintain the melodic unity of the original violin solos while adding extra layers of texture and voicing that only a pianist with Sham's finesse and control can execute.