Yuanfan Yang at the Teatro Comunale in Vicenza.

Amazing performance for ‘Incontro sulla Tastiera’ that for 45 years the indefatigable MariaAntonietta Squeglia has been organising in the beautiful city of Palladio.
But today there was something special in the air and a party atmosphere ignited by a young UK born chinese pianist whose improvisations and incredibly natural musicianship were being likened by an enthusiastic public to the prodigy Mozart!

At the end of the concert Yuanfan announced that he wanted to give  the audience the chance to take part too.

Can anyone offer a few notes on which he would create a piece,their piece,in this very moment?

The public were a bit wary of this novelty and no one wanted to be embaressed.

So Yuanfan turned his back on the keyboard and played five or six random notes and then created a piece in the style of Beethoven.

The President of ‘Incontro’ was heard complaining that Beethoven had been missing from the programme!
And what a beautiful piece it was!

Better than Beethoven?!

Now of course the cat was out of the bag and three people wanted to offer notes for a second encore from a now very insistant public.
No problem for our young musician touched by genius.
He improvised in jazz style using all three themes.
It brought the house down and poor Maria Antonietta and the sponsor Ermanno Detto have been bombarded by enthusiastic messages of disbelief and astonishment from their public.

But it was the story that his mother had to tell over breakfast today that revealed the true amazing facts about a young boy who out of the blue was discovered at a birthday party to be able to play the piano!
He was 5.
At the age of 6 the BBC made a programme about him and his amazing musical genius.

Yuanfans parents from Beijing were at Edinburgh University where he was born.With first class degrees from Bejing University they were invited on the Thatcher UK/China exchange to complete their Master degrees at Edinburgh University.

His mother obtained a master in Telecomunications and his father in East European Studies.
His father is a professor now at Leeds University and for many years his mother taught at Leeds High School.

They brought the five year old Yuanfan a piano as soon as they realised that he was born with this talent.
The mother of one of his friends had asked who his teacher was,as he had played so beautifully.

But he does not play the piano,she exclaimed, we do not even have one at home!

Well all that changed overnight and Yuanfan was taken to study at Chethams in Manchester with that magnificent trainer of so many amazing talented children,Murray McLachlan.

The family have altered their own lifestyle to give him all the opportunities that his talent demands.
Winning many International competitions and even the BBC composing competition and top prize in China for his First Piano Concerto that as winner toured eight major.cities in China!

It was,infact,his own piece :’The Haunted Well’ ,the prize winning piece of the BBC competition, played immediately after the interval that ignited the enthusiasm of a usually rather retiscent audience.
It was this four minute piece that the audience looked at with suspicion in a programme that included Schumann Carnaval,Chopin B flat minor sonata and Bach C minor toccata.
They soon realised that they need not have worried about this so called ‘contemporary ‘ piece.
They had obviously had some nasty experiences in the past.

But here was a piece full of magical sounds.
Of a fantasy of colours and subtle shading of the clock that stikes 13 at midnight (so clearly introduced by Yuanfan in a charmingly simple way….apologising for not being able to talk in Italian)’
It was all so clear as these’pictures’painted in sound filled the air with such sumptuous sounds.
Transcendental technical feats alla Messian were eagerly accepted by an audience immediately so involved in the story ..just like the Papillons  of Schumann….that he had to tell.

The Chopin B flat minor sonata ( his performance is new to me) was a revelation of clarity allied to a beauty and rigour that I have only experienced from the hands of Rubinstein.

If only we could have started the concert over again we would have realised what a superb performance he gave of Schumann ‘s Carnaval.

Full of subtle poetry and colour but with an aristocratic sense of rubato and flow that is of the chosen few.

Technical considerations never entered into the discussion such was his total mastery.

But his incredible technical mastery was also there to be admired by colleagues who have struggled for hours to master ‘Paganini’ or the ‘March of Davidsbundler!’

His Bach Toccata now is like a rock.But a multicoured rock that never wavers but is full of subtle colours and discreet ornamentation …..much more to follow….but would recommend wherever you are in the world to tune in on Friday 24th Jan at 11 pm Italian time to his live broadcast on RAI Radio 3.