https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2022/02/17/the-year-of-the-tiger-with-love-concert-yuanfan-yang-and-shirley-wu-at-the-nlc/
Yisha Xue in celebrating the Chinese New Year takes the opportunity of giving a platform to the amazing number of Chinese musicians that are fast filling our concert halls.Yuanfan Yang was celebrated together with the Tiger and has gone on to win recognition worldwide and now enjoys an International career.
Yuanfan Yang in paradise
Last year was Shuntian Cheng launched in the year of the Rabbit playing Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition
Together with the Keyboard Trust Yuanfan and many others have found a platform on the wonderful Steinway Concert Grand that stands in what used to be the kitchen of the National Liberal Club .Now the beautiful Lloyd George Room where this great piano has been newly acquired for the club where Rachmaninov had given his last concert performance in 1939 before leaving for America .He died in 1943 never to see the end of the catastrophic World War that had overtaken Europe .
There are some things that cannot be taught and the burning passion that comes out in his performance are God given gifts of the blessed few.
Ryan is totally convinced of what he is doing .The character he gave to all the different personages in this great fantasy was quite extraordinary as it unfolded with ever more diabolical virtuosistic invention .An overwhelming performance from a young man who had been sitting quite placidly at the dinner table with a public intent on celebrating first with a lecture and speeches and then a sumptuous Chinese dinner .Seated at the piano ,at last ,the public who had come to celebrate the Year of the Dragon ended up celebrating the birth of a star.
He had started learning this work on his own only a month ago and the charming scintillating Chinese Folk Song that completed this short cameo performance he had learnt only three days ago!
We must not forget that Ryan is still a schoolboy with 9 CSG’S behind him and much more academic work still to come as he starts to share his music Internationally too.
Today was the turn of the sixteen year old Ryan Wang to be launched on the wings of the Dragon .I had heard this young man play in Florence where I was a spectator and commentator for the final of the Montecatini International Piano Competition.Organised by an indefatigable Japanese pianist Aisa Ijiri with Sofya Gulyak (the first woman winner of the Leeds International Piano Competition in 2008 ) on the jury.We were in the beautiful newly restored Niccolini Theatre – a miniature opera house where many of Handel’s operas received their first performances – Sofya was downstairs on jury duty and I was in a box just above her .We had heard some very fine performances during the day but when a very youthful Chinese boy played the first notes of the Chopin Prelude op 28 n.15 I very excitedly sent a message to Sofya :’At last an artist!’ This young man was Ryan Wang who went on to win first prize at the competition last October.He has since taken Paris by storm at the 18th Animato International Piano Competition and has been hailed as a great talent by one of the greatest pianist and teacher of our day Dong Thai Son.
Montecatini International Piano Competition Final in the historic Teatro Niccolini in Florence.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=sb_KgHpOW2k&feature=shared
Ryan was awarded the first prize of 30000 euros and the Audience Prize of 5000 euros.
Ryan has also got full marks for his academic work at Eton.His 13 year old brother also at Eton is a talented ‘cellist!
Réminiscences de Don Juan (S. 418) A fantasy on themes from Mozart’s 1787 opera Don Giovanni .
Liszt’s opera fantasies…are much more than that: they juxtapose different parts of the opera in ways that bring out a new significance, while the original dramatic sense of the individual number and its place within the opera is never out of sight.
It begins with music sung by the Commendatore, both from the graveyard scene where he threatens Don Giovanni (“Di rider finirai pria dell’aurora! Ribaldo audace! Lascia a’ morti la pace!” — “Your laughter will not last, even till morning. Leave the dead in peace!“) and from the finale where he condemns Don Giovanni to Hell .The love duet of Don Giovanni and Zerlina follows :’ Là ci darem la mano ‘ along with two variations on this theme, then an extended fantasy on the Champagne aria ‘Fin ch’han dal vino’ and finally the work concludes with the Commendatore’s threat.
Liszt here even writes ‘parlando’ and Ryan made this aria speak with the beauty of the human voice.Even more scintillating cadenzas abound but played with ravishing delicacy bringing us to the beautiful lilting Allegretto where Liszt writes ‘piacevole’ amidst all the diabolical technical trickery.Ryan managed to bring a loving charm to this most beautiful of melodic outpourings that was interspersed though with filigree glissandi leading to the grandiose announcement of the variations.This was obviously where the great coloratura singer of the day could demonstrate her exquisite artistry .The second variation started as a ‘fugato’ that Ryan played with astonishing precision and led to the excitement and exhilaration of the ‘presto’ finale.Ryans unflagging sense of rhythmic drive and technical mastery brought us to the triumphant reappearance of the introduction and the tumultuous virtuosity of the monumental ending.
It is extremely technically demanding and considered to be among the most taxing of Liszt’s works and in the entire pianistic repertoire. For this reason, and perhaps also because of its length and dramatic intensity, it does not appear in concert programmes as often as Liszt’s lighter and more popular pieces, such as the Rigoletto Paraphrase. As Ferrucci Busoni says in the preface to his 1918 edition of the work, the Réminiscences carries “an almost symbolic significance as the highest point of pianism.” Liszt wrote the work in 1841 and published a two-piano version (S. 656) in 1877. The two-piano version bears a structurally strong resemblance to the original.
It was the final piece for Horowitz’s graduation concert at the Kiev conservatory; at the end all the professors stood up and cheered.Horowitz on his first appearance in Paris in the 30’s was described by the critics as the ‘greatest pianist alive or dead!’
In the words of Heinrich Neuhaus ,the great Russian teacher of Richter and Gilels , “with the exception of Ginzburg , probably nobody but the pianola played without smudges’ .This is a recording of Ginzburg : recorded in 1958 https://youtube.com/watch?v=5VU7NsF5E1E&feature=shared
https://youtube.com/watch?v=uGWY51WBWMg&feature=shared
ChristopherAxworthy-MusicCommentary 
Una risposta a "Ryan Wang ‘A star is born on the Wings of the Dragon’ at the National Liberal Club"