Becoming
Yutian Yang (piano)
rec. 2024, Church of the Holy Spirit, Kotor, Montenegro
Azure Sky AZ1024 [55]
Azure Sky Records have teamed up with the KotorArt International Festival in Montenegro to bring some of the best of the festival to a wider audience. In the first blossom of this partnership, Chinese pianist Yutian Yang develops the idea of transformation through a rather interesting collection of transcriptions and original works. The idea of becoming, of transformation and metamorphosis, is very clear in the romantic variations and transcriptions, where growth and transformation are built in. It is perhaps not so obvious in the more recent original works. Still, the pianist demonstrates a steady development of piano technique, from Czerny in the 1820s to Chinese-American composer Zhou Long’s evocative Wu Kui.
Czerny’s variations on a theme by Pierre Rode, commonly known as La Ricordanza, was made famous by Horowitz’s 1944 recording. I noted that several pianists have took it up in recent years. If one only knows Czerny’s useful but dry études, this delightful piece will offer a new perspective. It is elegant, imaginative and wonderfully effective, even if it is not among his most demanding works. Yang captures that elegance with panache, and gives the music space to breathe, even in the most finger-twisting passages.
There is the same precision in the utter command Yang displays in Grande Polonaise Brilliante, one of Chopin’s early successes. When it is played like this, one sees why it was such a hit. It is a supreme example of the brilliant style of the day but with the spark and nobility of Chopin’s genius; Polish spirit raises it above lesser dances. Yang never lets go of the dance at the work’s heart, its easy lyricism in the middle section and the gently spun andante that he added later.
Liszt was a master of transformation. Becoming could almost be his watchword – whether in transcriptions that shed new light on the originals, or in his own works which often underwent drastic revision over many years. He would also transcribe works that others may not have considered suitable or even technically possible; Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique springs to mind. Isolde’s Liebestod is another, if only from a textural point of view. How do you recreate on the piano that sustained cataclysmic orchestral climax? Liszt may not have been convinced that he found an entirely satisfactory solution but his transcription has nonetheless proven popular with pianists. Yang is no exception.She delivers a well-terraced performance.
Busoni made Bizet’s Carmen his own in a splendid chamber fantasy, the last of his six sonatinas. The major melodic and dramatic themes are here, wrapped up in Busoni’s love of counterpoint and considerable technical acumen. Yang ably catches the hustle and bustle of the final-act crowd scene. She brings out the taunting insolence and devil-may-care attitude of Carmen in the habañera. The Toreador’s song may have all the swagger and bravado that is Escamillo but Busoni soon has that confidence crumbling before our eyes. He ends the short work with an achingly poignant, despairing and enigmatic working of the fate motif.
Yutian Yang then played four études by Serbian composer Vasilije Mokranjac. He initially trained as a pianist, but turned to composition, studying under Stanojlo Rajičić in Belgrade. He wrote these études in the two years after his graduation. The restless first étude brings an eastern-European flavour to the turbulent writing that Scriabin was wont to employ. The second is that rare flower, an octave étude that promotes reflection rather than heroism, though its folkloric elements do grow rather impassioned. It seems set to end in a bright major key but a sudden paused chord returns us to the melancholy of the remainder of the study. A brutal quasi toccata follows, all shimmering alternating chords punctuated with flashes of stabbing notes. The final étude is almost a more focused, driven version of this, growing chromatically out of a growling bass. Yang’s thrilling performance matches the drama.
Zhou Long’s first studies were in Beijing. He continued at Columbia University and settled in Brooklyn. He has been composer-in-residence with several organisations, and worked with Yo-Yo-Ma on the Silk Road project. He takes an old Chinese legend of the warrior spirit Wu Kui as his inspiration for this work. It begins in toccata-like fashion low in the piano, and soon rises to take over the whole keyboard. Zhou Long goes on to explore a wide variety of textures, from long sustained passages, nebulous and vague, to startlingly bright rhythmic patterns and plucked strings. The work has no narrative; it is more a portrait of the warrior in all his aspects, “ritualistic and visceral” as Zhu Sun says in the programme notes.
This highly accomplished début recording showcases Yang’s command and flexibility of touch and timbre. Ratimir Martinović, founder and director of the KotorArt Festival, writes that “her artistic promise has been confirmed by […] her appearance at the KotorArt Festival, preserved in the recording presented here”. This suggests a live recording, but nothing else about it does. If it is. it is remarkably free of audience noise and in marvelous sound. All that adds up to an album that will not disappoint.
Rob Challinor
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Contents
Carl Czerny (1791-1857)
Variations on a Theme by Rode La Ricordanza Op.33 (early 1820s)
Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)Andante Spianato et Grande Polonaise Brilliante Op.22 (1830-1831)
Richard Wagner (1813-1883)Isoldes Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde S.447 (1867)
Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924)
Sonatina No.6 Chamber Fantasy on Bizet’s “Carmen” BV.284 (1920)
Vasilije Mokranjac (1923-1984)
Etudes for Piano (1951-1952)
Zhou Long (b.1953)
Wu Kui (1982)
