Reviews
Sleek and polished
BBC Philharmonic | Vassily Sinaisky | Bridgewater Hall | 6 Feb 2010
The Mendelssohn violin concerto in E minor was played by the young Chinese soloist, Tianwa Yang, making her UK concerto debut. She’s a player of great resource, sleek and polished, with a lovely cantabile in the slow movement, but saving something extra for the concerto’s ending. And, along with impeccable articulation, there were a few telling touches of phrasing where others simply dash.
Robert Beale, Manchester Evening News |
City Life Rating: 4 stars
Orquesta Sinfonica de Navarra | Ernest Martinez Izquierdo | Auditorio Baluarte, Pamplona | 6 Nov 2009
[the music of Sarasate] ... really captivated by Tianwa Yang, the Chinese violinist, ... [she] impressed us not only with her virtuoso and clear technical performance but also with her understanding of the score's soul. Yang is one of the few violinists who interprets Sarasate not only with prodigious virtuoso tuning and a wonderful sense of the rhythm, but also she interprets the real composer in Sarasate, endowing it with a personal vision... with real loyalty to Sarasate´s scores.
Diario de Noticias
CD Review:
Sarasate Concert Fantasies. Tianwa Yang, violin; Markus Hadulla, piano (Naxos 8.570192)
Yang has already demonstrated not only her stunning, effortless virtuosity, but an uncanny affinity for Spanish music in a recording of Sarasate's Spanish Dances (Naxos 8.557767). Here her ability to capture the bel canto style - its meltingly beautiful sound, vocal fireworks, rhythmic flexibility, graciousness, and charm - is equally astonishing. Her double stops are impeccably in tune, her runs glitter, her tone caresses the ear, and her expressiveness touches the heart without becoming sentimental or corny.
Edith Eisler, Strings Magazine, July 2009
(FULL review available July 1 2009 at www.stringsmagazine.com)
A brilliant West Coast debut for violinist Tianwa Yang
Violinist Tianwa Yang makes a big splash with Seattle Symphony in her Pacific Coast debut.
This interesting and entertaining program included overlooked gems, but foremost, the introduction of an extraordinary violinist...this young woman could outplay the devil.
Yang's splash on our coast was stunning, with Ravel's "Tzigane," inspired by Hungarian gypsy fiddlers. The work opens with a long, passionate statement from the lone violin, which Yang played with fire, as the orchestra listened in admiration. This composition was the perfect platform for Yang's talents, from the deep pentatonic declarations in the opening to the stratospheric harmonics and all the wild, infernal glissandos that slid in between. It's a madly magical piece, and Yang threw her whole body into it.
The Saint-Saëns "Havanaise" was gentler by comparison, but played with no less verve. This Cuban dance floated gracefully and showed new sides of Yang's technique. The crowd, the orchestra and Maestro Gerard Schwarz himself insisted on her playing an encore afterward, and she graciously obliged with the final movement from Ysaye's Sonata No. 4.
...the major buzz in the departing crowd remained the introduction of Tianwa Yang.
John Sutherland, The Seattle Times,
May 8, 2009 FULl Review
Obsessive and Rich in Contrast
Even amongst the flood of exceptional young violinists who are storming the musical stage at the moment, this young Chinese woman is particularly conspicuous not only due to her controlled, nearly faultless technique, her unrestrained desire for expression, and her willingness to take great risks, but also due to the depth of her emotional expression and the rich colours of her sound, to say nothing of the various demands of a colourful program.
Trans. Jenny Rose
Gerhard Schroth, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 27 Jan 2009 Full Review
The Violin that Loosed the Furies
The young performer offered an immediate, full-bodied start: Eugène Ysaye’s Solo Sonata (op. 27, 2) and its technical challenges testified to the full artistic potential of this violinist. The fourth movement “Les Furies” was particularly powerful – this section could hardly have been performed better.
... Beethoven’s c-minor Sonata (op. 30, 2) – a powerful, hearty piece ... was given a stirring performance by the two musicians, particularly in the Scherzo and in the Finale.
Prokofiev’s rarely-heard D-Major Sonata... in particular highlighted the flawless interaction of the two musicians. ... the warm, tight sound [Tianwa Yang] exhibits in the extravagance of her playing (particularly emotionally in the Beethoven Adagio) ... made this morning concert particularly rewarding.
Trans. Jenny Rose
Frankfurter Neuen Presse – Tuesday, January 20, 2009 Full Review
Power and Virtuosity
Frankfurt. – With dedication and musical intensity, the young Chinese violinist Tianwa Yang and the Hungarian pianist Balázs Fülei pulled off a tour de force through 150 years of musical history at the Hessischer Rundfunk’s (Hessian Radio’s) most recent lunch concert ...
Tianwa Yang’s performance was characterized by a powerful bow and grand expression. Her playing is defined by pointed accents and hard musical angles along with a positive wildness and tonal roughness which has an intense effect on listeners, particularly with the appropriate concert pieces. Eugène Ysaye’s Sonata for Solo Violin, op. 27 no. 2, and Sergey Prokofiev’s Sonata in D Major, op. 94, were picked for just this reason: to effectively emphasize these qualities in her style of interpretation.
In Ysaye’s sonata, the solist developed a powerful and expressive tone that remained structured and transparent despite the momentum. Her active body language underscored this impression all the more. This created a self-contained tension which allowed Yang to gracefully master acrobatic cadenzas. She adorned measured passages with a raw tone quality and sharp edges...
The artist sets clear priorities in her performances, which also came through in the Prokofiev sonata. An erratic and somewhat abrupt passage was consciously phrased less fluidly. The expressiveness and the raw variation of the cadenzas were pushed to the foreground. ... [In the third movement, the Andante,] Yang gave a convincing performance with her striking command of the instrument and her impressive virtuosity. The enormous level of difficulty was mastered with a baffling lightness and naturalness.
The two Spanish dances “Romanza andaluza” and “Caprice Basque” by ... Sarasate afforded both artists the opportunity to showcase their sense of rhythm and intensive cooperation, as well as to develop artful tonal flourishes.
All in all, the two musicians’ concert electrified listeners with the revelation of their clear, unmistakable, artistic passion. The intense applause in the well-attended studio bore witness to that.
Trans. Jenny Rose
Jürgen Gerth, Maintal Tagesanzeiger, January 21, 2009 Full Review
Taken to Technical Extremes
...a concert characterized above all by extreme technical mastery and vivacity.
Trans. Jenny Rose
Axel Zibulski, Offenbach Post, January 23, 2009 Full Review
Young Star from China
From Sarasate to Rihm: Effective Contrasts – Violinist Tianwa Yang in the Heidelberg Old Auditorium
Tianwa Yang’s Heidelberg debut in the fifth concert of the subscription series sponsored by the Society for Friends of Music and the Arts proves her early fame is completely understandable.
The young Chinese women, who has been studying in Germany since 2005, is not only a phenomenal virtuoso with a developed sense of sound, but especially a thoroughly serious musician with an unusually nuanced understanding of the repertoire.
Eugène Ysaye’s a-minor Sonata, op. 27/2 and Wolfgang Rihms “On Line VII” formed the climax of the program: two great, unaccompanied solo works, whose instrumental and rhapsodic demands clearly lay near to Yang’s passionate heart.
Ysaye’s splendidly glowing paraphrase of the “Dies irae” even managed to be topped by a monumental one-movement piece, lasting almost 25 minutes. The young violinist knew precisely how to masterfully wield [Rihm’s] increasingly intense and melodic expressiveness. The composer himself would have been as similarly enthusiastic about Tianwa Yang as he was about Carolin Widmann, to whom the piece is dedicated and who premiered this potentially new standard work in the year of its composition 2007.
With two pleasantly sweet treats in the form of Sarasate’s Romanza andaluza, op. 22/1, and Caprice basque, op. 24, Yang stirred up an appetite for the corresponding complete recordings....
The evening was framed by Beethoven’s dark a-minor Sonata, op. 23, and Prokofiev’s playful, neo-Classical D-major Sonata, op. 94 – two rarely-heard pieces, which Yang and Vielhaber performed with a gripping sense for a cultivated sound and sensitivity to detail.
Trans. Jenny Rose
Klaus Roß, RNZ – January 21, 2009 Full Review
Young violinist makes a splash with the DSO
A young Chinese violinist named Tianwa Yang, virtually unknown in the United States, swept into Orchestra Hall to play with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra Thursday night and - I swear - in two passes of the bow changed my perception of the landscape of violin playing in the world today.
By the time she had finished her grand-scaled, probing and drop-dead gorgeous turn through Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, the 21-year-old Yang had announced herself as the most important new violinist to come on the scene in many a year.
What impressed me more than her impeccable technique or lustrous sound was the expressive, highly personal and intelligent way she applied those qualities. Hers was a decidedly romantic take on the Bruch Concerto, an ideal blend of singing line and dark drama.
At the end, an electrified audience whooped its approval for several minutes. Yang seemed to be quite moved by the response. She's going to see a lot of that. And with any luck, DSO audiences will see of lot of this supreme musician.
Lawrence B. Johnson, The Detroit News 10 Oct 2008 FULL REVIEW
Ahead of her time
"Eight years later, the former child prodigy returned to Hong Kong and captured audiences with her musicality and musicianship. In her hands Prokofiev's soul-searching Violin Concerto no. 2 in G minor, opus 63 sounded like a mature craft from a sophisticated master rather than the work of a mere 21 year old."
Profile and review of Tianwa Yang's triumphant return to Hong Kong in October 2008 by Hong Kong-based music critic and historian Oliver Chou Read the entire Illuminating profile
Virtuosos in the region
Tianwa Yang in Bruchsal
The exceptional violinist Tianwa Yang from Peking, ... just twenty years old but already with a considerable reputation, enchanted an attentive, captivated audience at Schloss Bruchsal in an evening violin recital, above all with her power of expression.
Her virtuosity is considerable, her dynamics are immense, her sound radiantly pure; and the use she made of striking agogic accents gave a real lustre to this fantastic evening of chamber music.She shone in the stylised Spanish dances by the composer Pablo de Sarasate with vivacity and her rapturous, multi-faceted revelling in the clichés of folk music; at times she appeared almost like a flamenco dancer casting her spell with the violin.
... In the baroque and romantic pieces, this wonderful violinist ... demonstrated a symmetry of emphasis within the symmetrical phrase structures of Tartini's music and its emotional embellishment that was without equal, a great beauty of intonation and, again and again, remarkable expressivity with spirited outbursts in performance that were simply sensational.
... Tianwa Yang and the pianist Paul Rivinius also shaped the sonata op.94a by Sergei Prokofiev, with its partial banality and constantly recurring eclecticism with great integrity and without any hint of kitsch...
May 2007 - Bruchsaler Schlosskonzert
Prokofiev / Sarasate / Ysaÿe / Brahms d minor
KARLSRUHE, BADISCHE NEUESTE NACHRICHTEN
Sounds that dance, weep and rage.
With no warm-up phase and no compromises, Tianwa Chang gives one hundred and fifty per cent right from the start. The violinist opened her concert with pianist Paul Rivinius in Aalen with 'The Devil's Trill' sonata, Giuseppe Tartini's most significant work, a daring choice and a technical minefield. From the first bar the performance exhibited cast-iron credentials that caused amazement again and again in the way they kept up to the end without flagging.
... She tackled Tartini's unforgiving trial by fire in G minor with Italianate lightness and a true cantabile, strolling through a thicket of double-stops, and series of trills and overtones with sure-footed elegance - what could have been more stunning?
... It would have been impossible to improve on Yang's and Rivinius' way with the music, the "Cocktail" by George Gerschwin, and the rhythms of black cotton-field workers put to good use in the subdued colours of late impression and early expressionism. This was more than just a concert; it was a great event.
April 2007 - Aalen Tartini, Devil's Trill / Schumann a minor / Sarasate / Beethoven a minor /Debussy g minor
SCHWÄBISCHE POST
Orchestra All Set To Go.
Two sensational performances at once from Justin Brown and Tianwa Yang at the Karlsruhe Symphony Concerts.
... the very young Tianwa Yang ... caused the second sensation of the evening with Bruch's violin concerto in G minor. Enthralled, we followed this miracle on the violin: with the maturity of her sound and her expression as well as unbelievable technical refinement that did not permit any insecurities, the prize-winning Chinese lady moved effortlessly in the same league as Hahn, Jansen, Josefowicz and Skride. After the sensational Bruch, she proceeded to conjure up Ysaye's Ballade as her encore.
March 2007 - Karlsruhe Badische Staatskapelle
Max Bruch Violin concerto
KARLSRUHE, BADISCHE NEUESTE NACHRICHTEN
Artists Win Euphoric Applause
The ensemble 'MusiciJAHNa' fires audience enthusiasm at the municipal hall, Gernsbach with 'The Eight Seasons'.
... What she was able to conjure up with apparent ease through technically brilliant playing was mesmerizing, as was her way of celebrating the programmatic themes of both composers, thought through down to the last detail, and was then able to express her joy with dancing lightness. Particularly enjoyable were the filigree moments of tenderness when she made her ... violin sing, for instance in the expressive romance from Vivaldi's 'Summer', and in a plaintive passage from Piazzolla's 'Winter', which went straight to the heart. The Argentennien 'Furiosi' also provided some thrilling bravura playing though, in which she, together with this brilliantly exceptional ensemble, inspired the audience - An expert performance from every player.
... the most enthusiastic audience who, with their ecstatically wild 'standing ovations' and loud cheers, clearly did not want it to come to an end.
January 2007 - Gernsbach
"The Eight Seasons" Vivaldi/Piazzolla
KARLSRUHE, BADISCHE NEUESTE NACHRICHTEN
... I never expected a Chinese female to be able to play these idiomatically, but I honestly can find nothing wrong with her performances. Each piece is beautifully characterized and played with great polish and confidence.
Nov./Dec. 2006 - Sarasate CD / NAXOS
AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE
CD reviews
International Reviews
Sarasate's Complete Violin Music Volume 1 (NAXOS)
"Tianwa Yang's Sarasate CD is sensational. I have never heard a violin performance of anything by anybody that has given me as much pleasure as this recording. Yang makes every sound a classical violin is capable of making. High harmonics whistle. Low notes sound like only a viola could make them. Every note is so shaped as to have its own unique personality. The double stops are impeccably balanced. Buy this recording and fall in love."
Lief Carter, Amazon, May 21, 2007
"Basta escucharlo tocar unos pocos compases para corroborar su formidable talento. Toca, ademas, esta musica como hay que hacerlo, con frescura y arrojo, a la vez que sin sacar los pies del tiesto. Con un sonido bellisimo en el piano y suficiente potencia dinamica en el forte, Yang posee una tecnica solida: clarisimos todos sus arpegios ascendentes y nitidos igualmente sus pizzicatos de mano izquierda: una gratisima sorpresa que corrobora que el talento se ha instalado en Oriente."
**** Review, Ritmo, Spain, 2007
"Itzhak Perlman, Aaron Rosand, Alfredo Campoli, Charles Castleman, Rachel Barton Pine, and Ruggiero Ricci have all issued collections of the music of Pablo Sarasate. None of them sounds much like Sarasate, who recorded some of this repertoire. These artists to a large extent wrapped Sarasate's silvery brilliance in a dark cloak of Slavic ardor, or, in Campoli's case, Italian bel canto.
The young Chinese violinist, Tianwa Yang, plays Sarasate in the style more in sympathy with the Master's lightness but aggressively, too, and smolderingly Iberian. It's a different Sarasate than even Heifetz and Milstein presented, brilliant and showy though their Sarasate might have been. Yang's approach to this music sounds fresh and revelatory. Sharp edges notwithstanding, Yang's playing flashes with insights that should catch the attention even of those who feel that Sarasate either has been played out or never actually deserved much attention.
If her playing of the Romanza andaluza, doesn't burn with Heifetz's or Milstein's laser-like intensity, it stands almost equal to their performances in its insightful individuality. Similarly, her virtuosity in the Jota aragonesa sounds very different from, and more nuanced than, Ricci's white hot rendering. Yang, in short, creates the same degree of sensation that Sarasate's recordings themselves do."
Robert Maxham, Fanfare, April 2007
"The 1960s recording by Itzhak Perlman on EMI should be in every collection. And so too, should this. The young Chinese violinist Tianwa Yang plays all of Sarasate's virtuosity runs as if it's as simple as breathing. Sarsate would have performed them [the pieces] to delight, amaze and simply to please; his magic is still here in abundance."
Anthony Clarke, Limelight, November 2006
"Wonderful new recordings are still made, and this is one of them.
I never expected a Chinese female to be able to play these idiomatically, but I honestly can find nothing wrong with her performances. Each piece is beautifully characterized and played with great polish and confidence.
Every trick you hear in Paganini turns up here, but in the service of Spanish melodies and atmosphere. The fire and passion are controlled, but still hard to miss. The violinist understands all that and serves the music perfectly."
Donald Vroon, American Record Guide, September/Oktober 2006
Tianwa Yang (杨天娲)
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