It is with great joy and enthusiasm that I introduce my new album Hidden Treasures. I want to thank you for the love and encouragement I’ve received from so many of you, through emails and letters, for my previous album Embrace and my debut album Brava. It is through your words of affirmation and affection that I found the courage to go on searching for more pieces of music that work beautifully for clarinet and piano arrangement. I am so honored and privileged to have this freedom to extract exquisite melodies from the vast selection of incredible music written by great composers throughout many generations. Tales of unrequited love, admiration, despair and vengeance are weaved throughout my selections in Hidden Treasures. Life has many ups and downs, and, time after time, genre after genre, human hearts experience the joy, excitement and agony that belong to the powerful force that is love. This amazing palette of emotions, which cannot be fully described with words, can sometimes be best expressed through the magical power of music, especially stirring in dramatic arias from fantastic operas. The simple joys of life can be heard in Gounod’s Je Veux Vivre and Air de Bijoux, and in Balfe’s I Dreamt that I Dwelt in Marble Halls; sadness and despair in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice and Puccini’s Tosca; death and vengeance in Mozart’s Queen of the Night; and the triumph of love in Puccini’s Nessun Dorma. In Donizetti’s Una Furtiva Lagrima, from his opera L’Elisir d’amore, Nemorino’s hidden love for Adina drives him to acts of desperation, such as buying a “love potion” to gain the courage to declare his love to her. In Puccini’s O mio Babbino Caro, the young girl Lauretta begs her father for permission to marry her handsome lover, threatening to jump off a bridge if he does not relent. But even without such dramatic scenes in operas, we can also experience incredible emotion in lieders, such as loneliness in Tchaikovsky’s None but the Lonely Know and joyful playfulness in Rossini’s La Danza. Perhaps Brahms’ love and admiration for Clara Schumann transcends all the opera stories, because for Brahms it was his real life story. Years of adoration for the great pianist Clara Schumann inspired him to compose and present his amazing Third Symphony as a gift to her on her 64th birthday. In my opinion, it is the most beautiful symphony ever written. My never-ending affinity for Brahms’s Third Symphony, especially the third movement, "Poco Allegretto", compelled me to go beyond my comfort zone and act upon my hidden desire to reinvent it as a clarinet and piano arrangement, making it my own. Despite being fully aware of the reactions this may attract from Brahms enthusiasts and music critics, my natural childlike curiosity of, “What would it be like if…” drove me to pursue and give life to this new repertoire for the clarinet, which I hope all clarinetists around the world will embrace. A special and heartfelt thank you to Mr. Michele Mangani of Italy, who contributed to this project by composing and dedicating two beautiful pieces for me. Both Intermezzo and Dancing Doll are truly exquisite gems, and I feel privileged to be the first to record and present them in my Hidden Treasures. Enjoy!