It was just a few weeks ago that I heard Ryan at the Windsor Festival and was astonished at the mastery and maturity of a sixteen year old.So when I received this recording of a year previously I was so overwhelmed that I just had to write some thoughts and impressions of a young master.

Ryan Wang takes Windsor Castle by storm

I had heard Ryan for the first time at the final of the Montecatini Competition in Florence a year ago .The moment he touched the piano I was immediately struck by his artistry as he played a selection of Chopin’s 24 Preludes. I sent a message down to Sofya Gulyak saying ‘At last an artist’.

Montecatini International Piano Competition Final in the historic Teatro Niccolini in Florence.

I met his mother and brother Michael and learned that both the boys of fourteen and fifteen were on music scholarships to Eton where the whole family had transferred from Canada to pursue a dream. I later heard Ryan in the National Liberal Club invited by the indomitable Yisha Xue to play in her Chinese New Year celebrations.He played the Liszt ‘Don Juan fantasy’ in between the various courses of a sumptuous feast. Needless to say the highlight of the evening was this young man giving a masterly performance of one of the most notoriously difficult of all Liszt’s funabulistic Operatic paraphrases

Ryan Wang ‘A star is born on the Wings of the Dragon’ at the National Liberal Club

I asked Iris Wang how Michael was coping with a brother being celebrated as such a star? ‘Oh but Michael is a happy boy and loves it!’ Genius is never easy to live with and Ryan has been blessed with a talent that is so extraordinary suffering to find perfection in his art and this is how I interpreted a loving Mothers simple remark.

Listening to this remarkable recital one is aware of an artist who lives every note as he moves and weaves with the music that he is creating. Some things can never be taught but are gifts born by early experiences that no one is aware of but reveal themselves later on as an early aptitude is translated into mastery. Of course as George Fu so aptly stated in a recent interview for the radio before embarking on a performance of the Messiaen 20 regards a good teacher has to know how to push but also let go.

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Ryan has obviously had the good fortune to have teachers who have given him the means to allow his natural talent to grow and flower.

There was remarkable clarity and simplicity to the Haydn Sonata that was full of character and colour but always within stylish good taste.Haydn’s genial pedal indications were scrupulously noted but even more they were interpreted for the music box carillon that the piano with pedals could at last allow in that period . Every moment of the sonata was full of vital energy but with extraordinary sensitivity to Haydn’s sound world.The Adagio had a chiselled beauty and a radiance of colours and emotions where the deeply brooding minor key was played with searching intensity looking for a way back. A moment that Ryan found with the magic of barely whispered contemplation.There was an extraordinary clarity to the Allegro molto with phrasing that allowed the music to take wing with exhilaration and extraordinary fantasy.

The Norma Fantasy I have never heard played with such mastery.This is a work that needs enormous reserves of technique to allow the music to unfold with a continual forward movement no matter what technical difficulties are involved. It was just this wave of sound that this young man created from the first note and never let go. Sumptuous sound and great characterisation as the drama unfolded in Liszt’s masterly paraphrase correcting Bellini’s own order as an architectural shape is unfolded with breathtaking brilliance and sumptuous beauty. Thalberg and Liszt were both accused of having three hands such was the illusion that they like Paganini could create on their chosen instrument. Ryan was not only a poet but also a showman as indeed Liszt himself was. Liszt though ,like today’s a pop stars, with aristocratic ladies reduced to a hysterical rabble trying to get souvenirs of their idol to take back home perchance to dream! Ryan today showed us the masterly control of tension that held us on the edge of our seats as pyrotechnics and ravishing beauty were united under one glorious roof with breathtakingly fearless abandon.

Sublimely beautiful Chopin from the three Mazurkas op 59 played with beguiling rubato and fearless abandon to the senses and a timeless grandeur to the opening of one of Chopin’s last Nocturnes op 62 n. 1 .A Fourth Ballade that was indeed the pinnacle of the Romantic piano repertoire and played with remarkably mature aristocratic musicianship of searing intensity.

La Valse in Ravel’s own transcription was full of subtle insinuations erupting into naked abandon.A tour de force of technical perfection where streams of notes were thrown off as the musical meaning of decadence and passion were absorbed by this young man and thrown at us with fearless abandon as a kaleidoscope of sultry sounds filled the torrid air.

A standing ovation for a master of only fifteen! It was rewarded as Rubinstein would himself have done with Chopin’s ‘Winter Wind’ study where every note was absorbed and played with depth and meaning ( Rubinstein himself had told how as a lazy young man in Paris he had faked it but played with such character that it earned him an ovation ) .

The Chopin Héroique Polonaise played every bit as I remember Rubinstein and with the same reaction of an audience on their feet to applaude and feast such genius.

But Ryan had even more up his sleeve as with a slight laugh of recognition from the audience he played Beethoven’s much maligned ‘ Fur Elise’. But this was not the work that every music student has struggled with but a boogie woogie study of a masterly showman where I feel Volodos or Hamelin had got his hands on Beethoven to devastating effect but learn it is infact by Ethan Uslan

What a recital and only fifteen …………hard to believe but the link is there to behold for yourself .Q.E .D.

Ryan Wang ‘A star is born on the Wings of the Dragon’ at the National Liberal Club

Ryan Wang takes Windsor Castle by storm

Montecatini International Piano Competition Final in the historic Teatro Niccolini in Florence.