TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Orchestral colors shaped by themes of identity and distance from home will fill Taipei’s National Concert Hall on Tuesday as pianist Kimberly Chen Afanasova (陳介涵) and conductor Liao Yuan-hong (廖元宏) lead the Taipei Philharmonic Youth Orchestra.

“A Russian in America” highlights artistic currents moving between Russia and the US through three works. These include Hector Berlioz’s “Roman Carnival Overture,” Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “Piano Concerto No. 4, Op. 40,” and Leonard Bernstein’s “Symphonic Dances from West Side Story.”

Together, the pieces outline a journey from the Romantic era’s vivid style to 20th-century modernism and the energy of American musical theater. From Berlioz’s exuberance to Rachmaninoff’s reflections in exile and Bernstein’s distinctive American pulse, the musical arc echoes the experience of artists pursuing careers far from home.

The performers’ own experiences echo the concert’s themes. Liao is among a new generation of Taiwanese conductors based in France, while Chen trained at both the Juilliard School in the US and Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Conservatory.

Rachmaninoff composed much of his “Fourth Piano Concerto” during his years in New York. His shift into a new cultural environment, Chen said, can be heard in the work’s blend of Russian lyricism with elements of the emerging US musical language, including jazz-tinged rhythms and expanded harmonic colors.

Speaking at a press event, Chen added that the concerto’s melodies convey a sense of resolve, expressing the idea that “light will ultimately overcome darkness,” which she described as capturing the composer’s forward-looking spirit more than a century ahead of his time.