Professor of Music William Cheng was 20 years old when he took the stage with the Stanford Symphony Orchestra and performed one of the most demanding piano concertos ever written: Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3.
Twenty years later, his own student Daniel Liu ’26 will perform the same monumental work with the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra—at nearly the same age.
The Rach 3, as it’s known in music circles, is often called the “Everest of piano concertos”—and Cheng doesn’t disagree. “The musical work is a devilish gauntlet,” Cheng writes in The Improvised Concerto, a recently published essay exploring his experience with the piece. “Three sprawling movements over 45 exhausting minutes with tens of thousands of finger-tripping, wrist-twisting notes.”
When Liu approached Cheng two years ago seeking guidance, the professor couldn’t refuse. (Liu had heard about Cheng’s Stanford performance from Marcia Cassidy, a senior lecturer in the Department of Music and director of its Chamber Music Program.) “I felt like I was staring at a doppelganger of myself from 20 years ago,” says Cheng, who serves as chair of the music department. “It has been immensely gratifying sharing with him the specialized knowledge that I'd accrued from my own multi-year odyssey of learning the piece.”
“There’s something serendipitous about working on the Rach 3 with someone who’s been through the same journey—who understands not just the technical challenges, but what it means to tackle this monumental work as a young pianist,” says Liu, a computer science major, modified with mathematics, who is also pursuing a minor in music. “Learning a concerto of this scope is enormously time-consuming, and his commitment to helping me realize this dream has been extraordinary."
(Video by Chris Johnson)
Beyond the ‘razzle-dazzle’
For two years, Liu has immersed himself in the music in search of its expressive potential and storytelling arcs. “He loves finding hidden melodies and countermelodies in Rachmaninoff's contrapuntal thickets, and he has discovered inner lines and re-texturings I’ve never heard other pianists bring out,” Cheng says.
Early in their lessons, Liu said something that struck Cheng: “I find difficulty boring.”
“I thought to myself: what a profound thing to say, especially if you’re learning a piece known for its difficulty—and especially seeing as how ‘the difficulty’ will stalk and tackle you anyway, no matter how boring you happen to deem it,” Cheng says. “The difficulty of the concerto is a big part of why I, in college, felt so drawn to it… I simply wanted to see if I could do it. What Daniel’s saying is that the razzle-dazzle of musical virtuosity can sound and look cool and all, but it’s all in service of the music at hand.”
Liu credits Cheng for encouraging him to find his own voice as an artist. “He’s taught me that musical maturity means taking full ownership of every decision I make, from phrasing choices to pedaling to how I shape a climax,” he says. “It’s not enough to play the notes beautifully; as an artist you need to understand why you’re making each choice and be able to defend it artistically.”
Cheng’s philosophy of artistic ownership has deep roots in his own Rach 3 journey. While developing program notes for his Stanford performance, he was struck by Rachmaninoff’s well-documented insecurities. After the composer’s First Symphony received mean-spirited reviews in 1897, he suffered a psychological collapse. Reading Rachmaninoff’s self-deprecating reflections, Cheng realized that “composers are, as much as anyone, full of doubt, and such doubt is a formative element of the compositional process itself.”
Mere weeks before taking the stage at Stanford, Cheng still hadn’t learned either of Rachmaninoff’s two equally daunting cadenzas for the first movement. With time running out, he made a radical choice: he would improvise his own. If Rachmaninoff constantly questioned and revised his own scores, why should performers treat them as immutable?
“I thought, what if I could play something else entirely during the solo?” Cheng writes. “The orchestra gets to rest. So long as the conductor knows how you plan to transition out—you can play whatever you like.”
That improvised cadenza planted seeds that have continued to grow over two decades. Improvisation has since become central to Cheng’s artistic and scholarly life. In a recent Radcliffe Institute interview, he examines how the practice challenges classical music’s reverence for the printed score as a sacred text to be executed note for note. In his recent essay, Cheng imagines a future where such improvisation becomes central to the performance of concertos.
Like his teacher, Liu was moved by Rachmaninoff’s insecurities, which he emphasizes in his own program notes. He chose to learn one of the composer’s original cadenzas—but what he absorbed from Cheng transcends any single decision: the freedom to make the music his own.
“One of the most valuable things I’ve learned from Will is to view myself as an artist with my own interpretive voice, not just a pianist executing someone else’s vision,” he says.
Community through music
Liu came to Dartmouth uncertain about his musical path, having applied to conservatory in high school before changing course at the last moment.
“I thought I was going to continue solo practice and just play repertoire by myself until I discovered chamber music and the broader Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra,” Liu says. “It really revitalized my passion in music and allowed me to discover a new community of pianists and musicians alike, and find the joy in playing music with other people.”
What excites Liu most about the upcoming performance is the collective effort that made it possible. Liu expresses deep gratitude to everyone involved—from Professor Cheng’s musical guidance to piano technician Crystal Fielding, music department administrator Sam Candon’s behind-the-scenes coordination, and fellow students of the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra and conductor Filippo Ciabatti tackling Rachmaninoff’s demanding orchestral writing. “Watching everyone come together around this shared musical vision has been the most inspiring part of the entire process,” Liu says.
That sense of interdependence resonates with what Cheng hopes Liu will carry forward. “I hope he’ll think back to this time with pride and profound self-knowledge, remembering that the initial itch to learn it came from him alone, and this itch turned into a fierce urge, which he channeled into proactive striving—seeking lessons, practicing extensively, requesting an audition with Filippo, and cultivating a network of support,” Cheng says. “Given how musical practice can sometimes feel deeply solitary and independent, I think it can be powerful to be mindful of the interdependencies out of which musical offerings emerge.”
As the March 7 performance approaches, Cheng recalls a recent conversation with Liu about nerves and onstage mindsets. “He said something along the lines of, ‘But I know when it comes time for the actual performance, I’m going to be having so much fun on that stage, everything’s going to work out,’” Cheng says. “It’s not a logical statement per se, but it’s true. Daniel’s going to have the time of his life performing the concerto with Filippo and the DSO, and it’s going to be a beautiful evening.”
The Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra and soloist Daniel Liu ’26 will perform Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with director Filippo Ciabatti on Saturday, March 7, at 7:30 p.m. in Spaulding Auditorium at the Hopkins Center for the Arts.