Saturday night marked the triumphant finale to three weeks of nightly concerts for the Foundation for Chinese Performing Arts Series, whose director, Cathy Chan, has been bringing talented artists from all over the world to Boston for decades and deserves immense gratitude for her tireless work and devotion. Jordan Hall’s stage had been extended, making room for the 80 orchestra members and Steinway. Prokofiev came alive under the capable baton of Channing Yu the Mercury Orchestra presented 2024 Fou Ts’ong International Concerto Competition winner Jialin Yao in Rach 3.

Yao emerged victorious from a strong field of contestants last Sunday. Born in China in 1999, he began playing piano at age four and entered the China Conservatory of Music in Beijing in 2011. A frequent prize winner, he received a master’s degree at Julliard and is now striving for an Artist Diploma under Sergei Babayan (who also instructed Daniil Trifonov.)

The beloved Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor from 1909 the Mount Everest of the genre, runs for 45 minutes with the pianist playing almost that entire time―30,000 notes in all. He wasted his dedication on Josef Hofman, who disliked it and never played it. Rachmaninoff himself premiered it in 1909 in New York. The usually well-informed Sergei Prokofiev, at age 21, wrote to a friend he found the composition “dry, difficult, and unappealing. In musical circles it finds little affection, and besides the composer, no one is performing it so far.” His opinion about this proved to be wrong, as he would be about many other things. The concerto began to win fans with Vladimir Horowitz’s performances. Hearing him play the solo part for the first time, Rachmaninoff declared admiringly that Horowitz had “swallowed the concerto whole!” Well, so did Jialin Yao.

Two measures of orchestral locomoting, and Yao joined with a simple statement of the long melodic line, just one note in each hand, beautifully phrased. The orchestra picked up the theme while Yao launched into a series of fast arpeggios that are partially veiled by the strings. Rachmaninoff said he used these measures as a warm-up, moving his fingers and getting used to the feel of the piano.

The structure of the first movements is of perpetual motion interrupted with frequent stops, conjuring immense Russian landscapes. We get our first glimpse of Yao’s immense sensitivity in the expressivo section, about four minutes after the start of the concerto. He played Rachmaninoff’s exquisite melody with profound understanding, not only shaping the long lines, but even short fragments, granting each note its unique rising or falling dynamic level. In his biography Yao wrote that “he is a firm believer that the most moving music can only come from the most open-hearted and truthful human beings.” Profound words from someone so young.

Yu and Yao obviously spent time choreographing the interaction between pianist and orchestra, and the conductor gave Yao ample space to incorporate some of the rubatos and changes in tempi that we saw during the competition finals. The piano and orchestra remained perfectly in sync, except for a few spots in the finale, which happens to all orchestras. It was heartwarming to see the rapt attention and enthusiasm on the faces of the mainly young orchestra members. Yao played the majestic ossia cadenza, unleashing many facets of his immense pianistic talents: lightning-fast big chords, accuracy, finger speed without sacrificing nuance. His musicality alternated between delicacy and passion. The brighter Hamburg Steinway penetrated the large space, ideally suited for the ubiquitous treble notes with its bell-like sound, and the bass has a wonderful rich timbre. The mid-range of the piano became vaguely tinny when played at high volume, which thankfully only lasted for a few seconds at a time.

In the beginning of the Adagio second movement, the soulful melody played by winds, then strings, is suddenly interrupted by high clattering descending notes from the keyboard, like a bunch of preschoolers scampering into the room, only to dissolve into one of Rachmaninoff’s most beautiful melodies, infused with such immense love that even after hearing it thousands of time, it still has the power to move me to tears. Here Rachmaninoff bares his Russian soul. Yao captured the tremendous emotionality of the movement, turning to ever grander variations on the theme, the piano carrying the load supported by the strings and other instruments. Yao took meticulous care to finish phrases with a drop in volume and slight decrescendo. Transitioning into the fast, repeating notes of the rondo, he played with speed and aplomb while the winds murmured their own melodies in the background.

The triumphant third movement began marchlike, the più mosso section distinctly equestrian, pages of upward sweeping arpeggios conveying a great sense of liberty, with occasional thoughtful returns to themes from the first movement, building to the explosive finale, when Yao gave our rider on horseback even greater speed, with reckless abandon storming to a victorious finish, the orchestra racing to keep up.

Before the final notes had even faded, the audience leapt to their feet and erupted into thunderous applause and a universal chorus of bravos. The pianist received flowers, and encored with Granados, Spanish Dance No. 2 “Oriental.” That Yao could still shape the delicate melodic lines at the hushed pp level shows his supreme touch control. When the piece ended there was a seemingly endless silence in the concert hall, the audience unwilling to relinquish the serenity — and then wild applause. Audiences worldwide will fall in love with Jialin Yao, we certainly did.

After the intermission, with the piano gone, the spotlight turned to the orchestra in Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5. Prokofiev mirrored Rachmaninoff’s life path in eerie ways. First the obvious: both were piano virtuosi named Sergei, born in April, both Russian, both thin and very tall, (Rachmaninoff 6’6” to Prokofiev’s 6’3”). They both fled from Russia to America in 1918 after the Bolshevik revolution; both then bounced around America and Europe for decades, only to flee Europe in the late 1930s, Prokofiev to Russia and Rachmaninoff to America. The regime banned the music of both  and plundered their assets. Glasunov and Koussevitzky featured prominently in both their lives. And finally the compositions themselves: The Rach3 came into being at Rachmaninoff’s Ivanovka estate among close family in the summer of 1909, while the Symphony No. 5 came to life during the summer of 1944 at Ivanovo, at a composer’s retreat, also attended by Glière, Shostakovich, Khachaturian, and Kabalevsky. Both works resulted from sudden inspiration and took only weeks to compose, during particularly happy periods of their lives. Rach3 premiered in New York, and Koussevitzky brought Symphony No. 5 to the BSO shortly after its Russian debut.

Prokofiev said that his fifth symphony is “a hymn to free and happy man, to his mighty powers, his pure and noble spirit.” The orchestra began with only the exposed wind instruments, in a slow Andante tempo, emoting a tranquil vaguely pastoral theme, joined by the strings. The players rendered Prokofiev’s characteristic tonal “side-slips” in elegant abundance, though the rhythms and melodies that constantly meander into unexpected directions proved a challenge for the orchestra. The popular and exhilarating second movement brought forth strains of Romeo and Juliet, as the composer originally intended this thematic for the ballet, and recalled Mercurio’s antics with Juliet’s nurse. It demanded much technical virtuosity from the winds (the clarinet, most particularly). The allegro sped up and came to a surprisingly abrupt ending. The more predictable rhythms of this faster movement better suited the players.

The Adagio had a pleasantly lumbering feel, as the harmony slid from major to minor and back, and the indecisive division of the pulses between twos and threes, created a feeling of being utterly unmoored. The violins soared stratospherically at times, seeming to weep. Yu chose a fast tempo for the Allegro giocoso, and his whimsical take gave great scope to Diego Bacigalupe’s long clarinet solos, and the members of the percussion section added increasing doses of pepper and spice to the mix that rushed to a precipitous ending.

Yu’s Mercury Orchestra is a success story. Over 16 years, the sizeable, mostly volunteer ensemble year after year courageously tackles demanding repertoire. Saturday’s audience showed wild appreciation as the sections and soloists took their bows. 

Sibylle Barrasso is a long-time piano student of Robert Poli. She has played in piano competitions in Pickman Hall and Chicago, is on the board of directors of the Boston Piano Amateurs Association and has played for audiences in the Boston Symphony Cafe since 2010.