 XIAYIN
WANG BURSTS UPON
THE AMERICAN MUSIC SCENE
Young Chinese Pianist Winning New
Friends for Classical Music
NY.... A Carnegie Hall debut with Symphony
behind her and glowing reviews from her first recording "Introducing
Xiayin Wang" now starting to blossom, there is no doubt that this
charming young pianist is starting to set the classical music world
on fire. "...breath of repertoire, sensitivity of touch, and a
beautiful overall sound...Wang is quite an exciting player" raved
the All Music Guide and The New York Sun reported " A poetic touch"
while the November issue of The Classical Music Magazine - Fanfare
headlined their feature article - Discipline and Heart: A
Conversation with Xiayin Wang. The story/review by Peter J.
Rabinowitz covers the differences growing up as a pianist at the
Shanghai Conservatory of music where her training and the discipline
set the stage for her additional schooling here in the United
States. He has her talk refreshingly about music today - yesterday
and of course, her "favorite" pianists. He then talks of her
"elastically phrased, velvet-toned Ravel, which builds to a
kaleidoscopic climax, her ecstatic performance of the Scriabin
Waltz, her glowering Vers la flamme, and, perhaps best of all, her
impassioned accounts of Earl Wild's etudes on Gershwin. Wang speaks
in her interview about the importance of "discipline," but it's
clear from these performances that she's referring to the kind of
discipline that liberates, not the kind that enslaves...it nearly
always feels spontaneous." Before arriving in the US from her native
China where she had completed her studies at the Shanghai
Conservatory of Music, Xiayin Wang (pronounced shy-inn ) had
garnered an enviable record of first prize awards and special honors
and had played as soloist with China's leading orchestras. Here she
studied at the heralded Manhattan School of Music and won it's
Eisenberg Concerto Competition, as well as the noted Roy M.
Rubinstein Award. In addition to a wide and eclectic repertoire, she
also has a love for chamber works and plans to record in this area
in the coming year. New CD's, video on YouTube and MySpace, a
recital at Carnegie's Zenkel Hall in New York and extensive touring
this coming season promise to carry this exciting artist to her next
adventures on the world's great concert stages.
Music Review
Answering Bach’s Call With
Color and Stamina
G. Paul Burnett/The New York Times
The pianist Xiayin Wang at Zankel Hall on
Monday night.
Even for the most gifted young pianist, it
takes a lot to be noticed. Xiayin Wang is clearly doing something
right. In her native China, where she trained at the Shanghai
Conservatory, Ms. Wang took first place in numerous competitions.
Since her arrival here in 1997, she has added further prizes to her
tally, played Carnegie Hall several times and released a
well-regarded recital CD.
Ms. Wang’s recital at Zankel Hall on Monday
night offered plenty of evidence for her success. Bach’s Violin
Chaconne in D minor, as arranged for piano by Busoni, served as her
calling card. It neatly illustrated two of her principal strengths:
an estimable grasp of pianistic color and an ability to maintain and
illuminate a strand of melody within the thickest of textures.
Prokofiev’s terse “Sarcasms” had an
appropriately steely glint, and three sonatas by Scarlatti were
lithe and buoyant. Now and then a finger fell astray, but the
personality of Ms. Wang’s playing compensated.
She offered a well-wrought account of
Scriabin’s Fantasy in B minor, the work of a young, earnest Chopin
acolyte. She found considerably more poetry in Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantaisie
in A flat, underscoring its affecting melancholy through the dreamy
reverie of her opening bars and her beautifully flexible phrasing
throughout.
“My Wounded Head (dreams of moths),” newly
created for Ms. Wang by Marc Chan, a gifted young pianist and
composer from Singapore, is part of a series based on a set of
pitches from Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. In the first section of the
work icy notes clang across the keyboard at fluctuating speeds; in
the second they swarm in masses of nervous tremolos. The work’s most
impressive feature is its daunting physicality; Ms. Wang met its
challenges with commitment and stamina.
She concluded her program with a voluptuous,
intensely colored rendition of “La Valse,” by Ravel. Her
go-for-broke bravado near the end did justice to this fanciful
showpiece’s macabre undercurrents. Her encore, Earl Wild’s virtuoso
transcription of “The Man I Love,” by Gershwin, seemed urbane by
comparison.
~ Steve Smith, New York Times,
April 2, 2008
Quotes:
 “A
Poetic Touch”
~ The New York Sun
“Wang's
Bach is superb -- she really makes the Adagio in this solo concerto,
adapted from Benedetto Marcello, sing.”
“Wang
is quite an exciting player and has precisely those qualities that
make the prospect of seeing this artist in concert appealing --
breadth of repertoire, sensitivity of touch, and a beautiful overall
sound.”
~ Dave
Lewis, All Music Guide
“The
refinement and understated beauty of [pianist Xiayin Wang's] playing
is of a loveliness to draw tears from a sensitive listener. Gorgeous
is the only way to describe these performances.”
~ American Record Guide
“I
suspect that most readers will find the 20th-century music to be
even more attractive—her elastically phrased, velvet-toned Ravel,
which builds to a kaleidoscopic climax; her ecstatic performance of
the Scriabin Waltz; her glowering Vers la flamme ; and,
perhaps best of all, her impassioned accounts of two of Earl Wild’s
etudes on Gershwin. Wang speaks in her interview about the
importance of “discipline,” but it’s clear from these performances
that she’s referring to the kind of discipline that liberates, not
the kind that enslaves. For while the playing never seems
approximate, it nearly always feels spontaneous. The sound is
excellent too—and although there are no notes about the music, I
suspect that the pianophiles most likely to be attracted by this
recital don’t really need them. All in all, a succulent introduction
to a pianist well worth watching.”
~ Fanfare Magazine
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