Xiaohui Yang: Duo Recital (Finalist)

As a semi-professional listener/blogger, I don't know quite what to make of Franz Lizst's Rhapsodie in C-Sharp Minor, No. 12. It started out foreboding, went through a lot of fast rolling chords, then a sort of return to tea-party, flower-garden outdoor dance music. It had pretty flourishes, it had strong, forceful crescendoes, it had energy and silence and I don't even know what else. It seemed from my vantage point that it would be really difficult to take all of those different moods and sew them together into a cohesive piece, at least from the artist's point of view. What I do know, however, is that Xiaohui Yang was able to pull it off. Yang was as into the music on Monday as she was on Saturday, leaning far over the keyboard during intense stretches and smiling through the flourishes that ended the piece.

Closely following Lizst was Brahms's Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 2, played with the assistance of distinguished violinist Illana Setapen. After all the variety of the Lizst, Brahms felt a lot quieter and more straightforward. The duo didn't often get very loud together, but on those occasions, they did a good job of complementing each other; it appeared as though they could play off each other quite well. Yang closed out the program with the first movement of Mozart's Concerto No. 23, which she called a "delicately shaded solo part, devoid of virtuoso brilliance". She went on to describe how the orchestra introduces the themes and the piano tends to follow, and how both of the themes are very introverted. The piece is "full of all different kinds of emotions," she said, and "we can see Mozart's smiles and tears in it".

After listening to Yang, I was inclined to agree with her on the piece's character. She took several of the piece's high passages very quietly, almost coyly. When the themes did end up combining, however, they seemed to mesh well. Bearing out her 'introverted' comment, parts of the piece almost felt like an inside joke at times, with lots of little hooks and sly, cunning phrases. Yang was very comfortable taking the lead from the "orchestra", and carried off both her long, fast passages and the slower, more contemplative ones with little trouble.

Xiaohui Yang was named a PianoArts Finalist, and will perform the entire Mozart concerto with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra at the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts in Brookfield on Wednesday, June 13th.