So when I was asked to play a Bach and Brahms recital at the Met, I wanted to include a Bach transcription of a Vivaldi concerto as well as some straight Bach. 'There's always an added layer of interest. 'For me transcriptions are a combining of personalities,' he said. Having grown up in a household with an extensive library of Vladimir Horowitz and Glenn Gould recordings, he was drawn to fiery Romanticism - particularly virtuoso transcriptions and later the works of Prokofiev, which became his calling cards - and to Bach. Hofstadter was teaching a first-year computer science class at Indiana University, he enrolled and went on to earn a degree in the field.Īspects of computer science still interest him, particularly artificial intelligence and the question, as he puts it, 'How does creativity come about through these very basic functions of signals being transmitted from one thing to another?'īut even as he was earning his science degree, Mr. Hofstadter's 1979 treatise on symbols, patterns and creativity. As a teenager in Indianapolis he was fascinated with 'Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid,' Douglas R. Chiu, 41, might easily have taken the academic route. Sitting in his quiet living room and discussing the Bach and Brahms recital he will play at the Metropolitan Museum this evening and some of the twists his career has taken in the last 15 years, the pianist Frederic Chiu could almost be mistaken for a computer geek with a tenured university post.ĭressed casually, with his long hair pulled back in a ponytail, and wearing oval, wire-rimmed glasses and cords with an iPod and a cellphone around his neck, he sipped at a blend of lemonade and carrot juice and spoke about music philosophically and analytically.

Frederic chiu