Saturday, June 9, 2012

Xiaohui Yang: Into Her World

During Beethoven's Sonata No. 26, the pianist has several long, drawn-out notes played with the right hand, while the left hand has no part. When Xiaohui Yang played these notes in particular, her left hand seemed to rise almost of its own accord. As if holding an imaginary conductor's baton, it drifted through the air and almost seemed to be shaping the music all by itself. That's how into her pieces Xiaohui Yang was. In all the sprinting and stopping in that piece, in the loud and forceful parts and in the quiet, contemplative ones, Yang never seemed anything less than totally absorbed in the music. Pressure of the competition be damned, she looked like she was having the time of her life. 

Yang's Well-Tempered Clavier was strong and forceful without losing its temper or being overly demonstrative. It's a weird combination to have, but Yang pulled it off: an assertive, unabashed Bach that didn't run away with itself and become just a long cascade of notes. Very direct and to-the-point. Her Chopin Nocturne was largely as calm and quiet as most of them were, except for those long archipelagos of notes that she put some life into.


If I were ranking the semifinalists purely by the evocative images they conjured up out of their pieces, Yang would definitely be in the top three. When describing her flagship piece, Robert Muczynski's Six Preludes for Piano, she told the audience how "a vivid character is crystallized in each [prelude]", including the "arrogant guy who walks down the street and whistles" and "someone with an attitude problem that no-one wants to talk to." She put some serious edge into even the jaunty bits of the arrogant guy's prelude, and yet it was still jaunty as all get out. It's not an overly common thing where the description and the piece itself were both pleasurable to listen to, and I quite liked that.

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