Preview: Vancouver Symphony to present Young Artists Showcase

One of the most awesome concerts of the Vancouver Symphony’s season will take place this upcoming weekend (January 17 and 18) when three of the nation’s top young talents will perform with the orchestra. This is the 31st Young Artist Showcase, featuring the winners of VSO’s annual competition, which was held in October at First Presbyterian Church. An esteemed panel of judges (Zuill Bailey, Dr. Julia Hwakyu Lee, Philippe Quint, Dr. Ken Selden, and Dr. Igor Shakhman) determined the winners in the piano, brass/woodwind, and strings categories. The gold medalists were pianist Wilson Liu, violinist Hana Gottesman, and , alto saxophonist Jacob Peizner. Each of them received $5,000 and the opportunity to perform with the VSO.

To find out more about these extremely talented young musicians, I contacted each one by phone, starting with Wilson Liu. Although Liu is only eleven years old, he is already a veteran winner of competitions, including the 2025 International Young Artist Concerto Competition At age seven, Liu entered The Juilliard School Pre-College Division where he won the Bachauer Prize with full scholarship and Concerto Competition. He studies with Hung-Kuan Chen and Tema Blackstone.

When he was four and a half years old, Liu started playing on a small electric piano and moved to an upright a year later. Although Wilson’s parents are not musical, he was encouraged by them.

“I don’t sing well, so I stayed with the piano, and that’s been a good choice,” said Liu. “I love the vast range of possibilities that I can get from the keyboard. If you experiment with color, every different way that you play a note comes out differently.”

During the weekdays Liu practices two to three hours, but over the weekend he dedicates more time. He will play the first movement from Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 with the VSO.

“One of the things that I find fascinating about this concerto,” said Liu, “is that it is one of the two concertos that he wrote in a minor key. The first one was in C minor, and this one is in D minor. So it has a sense of darkness that is a bit unusual for Mozart’s concertos. I always wonder if the people who heard it for the first time were scared by the music. It also has a four-note motif – a quick upward motion – that is so cool that Beethoven, Schubert and other composers stole the idea and used it in their music. For example, Beethoven’s Sonata No. 111 uses the same thing.”

Gold medalist Hana Gottesman is a 17-year-old violinist from Bellevue, Washington, who has won top prizes at Royal Maas International, UK International, Coeur d’Alene National Young Artist, MTNA National, and Seattle Young Artist Music Festival competitions. She has appeared as a soloist with the Northwest Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Northwest, and SEEN Orchestra of Chicago.

Gottesman started when she was about six. She grew up in a musical household.

“My mom plays the piano and my dad is a violist,” said Gottesman. “I love classical music and the violin in particular. That has kept me focused.”

Gottesman, who attends schools in Bellevue, has studied violin with Jan Coleman and currently works with Simon James. With the Vancouver Symphony, she will play Ravel’s “Tzigane.”

“’Tzigane’ opens with an improvisational feeling – like gypsy fiddling – which relates to the title, which means gypsy,” said Gottesman. “It’s a piece that constantly shifts in mood and character, and that is fun to share with the audience. It opens with a long, challenging cadenza. The first page is all on the G string. I like to give the high G a lot of vibrato so that it sounds intense. I really enjoy the incredible variety of colors that this piece offers.”

“When the orchestra comes in,” said Gottesman, “and the main theme of the piece is finally exposed, it is fun to listen to how that that is repeated through the rest of the piece – with all of the variations. The music evolves into something else at the end.”

Jacob Peizner, age 17, is a senior at Oregon Episcopal School and a student of Phil Baldino and Kenneth Radnofsky. Peizner was one of ten saxophonists internationally selected for the 2024 Boston University’s Tanglewood Saxophone Workshop and was co-principal saxophone for the 2025 Tanglewood Young Artists Orchestra and Wind-Ensemble. He is the principal saxophonist in the Portland Youth Philharmonic and has soloed with the PYP Camerata ensemble.

Peizner started playing saxophone when he was a sixth grader.

“I chose it because I like jazz and saxophone is cool, said Peizner. “I grew up in a musical family. My mom plays flute, and my grandmother plays piano. I play clarinet and piano, also.”

With the VSO, he will play Jacques Ibert’s “Concertino da camera for alto saxophone and eleven instruments.”

“It was composed for Sigurd Raschèr, one of the pioneers of classical saxophone,” said Peizner. “He could play four octaves on the saxophone, which was very rare. Ibert’s composition has some really high notes that are very challenging to play. I am going to take them, using what we call ‘extended technique.’ It’s a very tricky piece. There’s a lot of fast passages with tricky keys. The piece is literally a ‘little chamber concerto.’ I like to keep that in mind. It shouldn’t be played heavily or taken to seriously. It has jazzy elements.”

In addition to the soloes by the gold medalists, the VSO, under Music Director Salvador Brotons, will play Mason Bates' "Mothership," and the Suite from the from Richard Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier,” as well as his symphonic poem “Till Eulenspeigel’s Merry Pranks.”