Virtuoso Tianwa Yang has audiences on string

At 13 Chinese violin virtuoso Tianwa Yang recorded the challenging 24 Paganini caprices, and now at 31 she is conquering audiences around the world, including Sydney.

Chinese violinist Tianwa Yang captured the Sydney Symphony audience. Picture: Andrej Grilc

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By the age of 13 Chinese violin virtuoso Tianwa Yang had recorded the 24 Paganini caprices, and now at 31 she is conquering audiences around the world with her faultless technique and keen musicality.

Mentored by the great Isaac Stern, she has earned a place as one of the leading soloists of her generation and she treated Sydney audiences to a memorable performance of Max Bruch’s bravura Romantic showpiece, Scottish Fantasy, for her appearance with Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

Yang is not a showy virtuoso. She planted herself firmly on the stage with her feet apart, swaying in her smart but no nonsense cerise dress, nodding and occasionally stamping a foot at some of Bruch’s more spirited moments in passages inspired by Scottish folksongs in which you almost hear the swish of swirling kilts.

On the podium Israeli conductor Asher Fisch directed the SSO with expansive precision, as he had done in the dramatic opening work on this Scottish-inspired program, Richard Strauss’s early tone poem Macbeth.

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Yang, who is based in Germany, was very much the star of the show, combining an astute musical intelligence with all the party tricks of the trade — double and triple stopping, lightning fast and accurate runs up and down the fingerboard — in this showcase work.

The audience felt that 30 minutes of her remarkable talent was not enough and her encore, the andante from Bach’s Sonata No 2, showed Yang’s wonderful bowing arm at its subtlest and smoothest, the singing lines soaring over a pulsing rhythm. It was all one seamless movement.

Asher Fisch conducted with expansive precision. Picture: Rori Palazzo

Fisch is more familiar to Perth audiences where he is chief conductor of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. His pedigree is immaculate, having started his conducting career as assistant to Daniel Barenboim at the Berlin State Opera.

Recently he has made a huge impression with his survey of Wagner’s operas, but it was Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony that he chose to close this program.

Darker than his fourth Italian Symphony — which the composer aptly described as “blue sky in A major” — the third was also written when Mendelssohn was doing his grand tour.

Unlike the Bruch work there are no Scottish folk tunes and no Caledonian references, so much so that even Robert Schumann thought it was describing Italy when he first heard it.

Fischer kept a tight control of tempos and dynamic throughout this performance. The SSO, peppered with several younger principals and guests in among the more familiar stalwarts, was in fine form.

DETAILS

● CONCERT: Sydney Symphony Orchestra Scottish Fantasy

● WHERE: Sydney Opera House Concert Hall

● WHEN: Saturday, March 9, 2019