Review: A sparkling, jazzy concert from Joyce Yang at the Wallis
Extrovert sparkle brightened pianist Joyce Yang’s deeply satisfying recital debut here on Tuesday night at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills.
Although works by Schumann, Debussy, Granados and Ginastera received exciting treatment, it was Yang’s kaleidoscopic rendition of the program’s centerpiece, Carl Vine’s 12 electrifyingly eclectic “Anne Landa Preludes” from 2006, that proved even more extraordinary.
Vine, one of Australia’s preeminent composers, dedicated his “Preludes” to Landa, a major Australian arts patron who died in 2002. These 21st century masterpieces are by turns whimsical, texturally dense and jazzy. Introducing the set, Yang compared Schumann’s penchant for dynamic and emotional extremes in the three “Romances” (Op. 28), which opened the program, with Vine’s “super schizophrenic” miniatures.
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Indeed, though none of the brilliantly crafted preludes lasts more than two minutes, the technical demands are often epic, sometimes conveying a Schumannesque sense of mental fragmentation and fantasy. But the Birmingham-based Yang (her husband is assistant principal double bass in the Alabama Symphony) made the score’s many hurdles seem like child’s play.
In the percussive “Thumper,” the third prelude, which was reminiscent of Prokofiev, Yang maintained a steady pulse while playing chords in different rhythms. In Yang’s crisp rendering of the sixth prelude “Milk for Swami Li” (a made-up character, Vine says in his dryly humorous program notes), her hands ranged across the entire keyboard. “Divertissement,” which followed “Milk,” displayed a Gershwin-like jazziness, all rhythmic drive with unexpected accents. In the speedy ninth prelude, “Tarantella,” Yang controlled extremes of high and low registers, her attacks displaying marvelous finger dexterity.
Liszt and Brahms might have recognized some of the thickening textures in the demonic “Fughetta,” the penultimate and perhaps most volatile of the set, in which Yang never lost the melody amid the pyrotechnics. Often a thrilling high-wire act, Vine’s Preludes also offered many passages of repose. A stunning contrast to the “Fughetta,” the concluding “Chorale,” for example, was all gentle melody in Yang’s hands.
Incidentally, as she performed these buoyantly imaginative pieces, the sparkles on Yang’s black gown flashed, adding a visual analogue to the fantasy of Vine’s preludes.
After intermission Yang, 30, gave atmospheric readings of Debussy’s three “Estampes.” She conjured plenty of lyricism in Granados’ “Los Requiebros” (The Compliments), the second of two pieces she performed from “Goyescas.” Displaying remarkable stamina, Yang returned to headlong form in “Danza del Gaucho Matrero” (Dance of the Cunning Cowboy), the third piece from Ginastera’s “Danzas Argentinas” (Op. 2).
Yang has a lot of jazz in her, an audience member said after her elegant rendering of Earl Wild’s virtuosic transcription of Gershwin’s “The Man I Love.” Indeed.
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