Yang & Wang

My late night listening today was to two Chinese women in their 20s: Xiayin Wang (piano) and Tianwa Yang (violin). Miss Wang played Rachmaninov, and Miss Yang played arrangements by Sarasate. An enjoyable late-romantic feast.

Tianwa Yang captures to perfection the elegance and sophistication that Sarasate's music demands. Technically she is completely on top of this rather difficult music, that makes considerable demands on a violinist's bowing technique. More importantly, she is also on top of Sarasate's stylistic demands. This evening's CD was the last and final episode in Miss Yang's traversal of pretty well all Sarasate's music; I loved it.

Then on to Miss Wang. Rachmaninov's two piano sonatas do not sound easy to play, even to a non-pianist like me. In places, I could swear there were four hands at work, not just two (e.g., towards the end of the slow movement of the first sonata). I admired greatly Miss Wang's first Rachmaninov CD (which is why I bought the current one, the second Rachmaninov CD from this pianist). Xiayin does not disappoint; as I remarked when talking about the first CD, she has power when power is needed, and delicacy when delicacy is needed. And she has technique to burn (much needed, I sense, in these two piano sonatas).

Famously, Rachmaninov the composer was much sniffed at by the critics for much of the twentieth century for writing late-romantic music in an era when any composer worth his salt was writing abstract, twelve-tone concoctions much admired by critics, if not by players and listeners. History has proved Sergei right, and the critics wrong. After over a hundred years, Rachmaninov's music -- like that of Sarasate -- is still being played and enjoyed. As per me, this evening.