Young Ms. Yang Pianist proves age isn't needed for wisdom

11.09.09
Joyce Yang
Pioneer Press

By Rob Hubbard

How old do you have to be to really get Beethoven ... or Brahms ... or Robert Schumann? It's a topic of debate among classical music lovers and educators. Some say musicians need a lot of life experience before they can truly relate to the internal conflicts expressed in those composers' works.

But Joyce Yang presents a musical argument to the contrary. On Sunday afternoon at St. Paul's Macalester College, the 23-year-old pianist performed a Chopin Society recital that might cause some to reconsider their ideas about the limits that age and experience impose upon an artist.

Yang is a pianist on a rapid ascent. Her out-of-nowhere silver medal finish at the 2005 Van Cliburn Piano Competition put her on the map, and now the Korea-born, Juilliard-schooled soloist is linking up with major orchestras for concerto performances, sprinkling in recitals along the way.

On Sunday, Yang exhibited an endearing energy as she scampered through the opening of Lowell Liebermann's "Gargoyles," then paused to evoke a meditative mood on its slower sections. For Beethoven's Sonata No. 18 ("The Hunt"), she accepted the composer's assurances that he was off on a "new path" (as he wrote at the time) but not before he took a long look backward at his mentor, Haydn, in the opening movement. The most arresting aspect of Yang's Beethoven was a slow Menuetto movement that emphasized the anticipatory upbeat of each measure.

This subtle sense of expressing the almost-said — emotions about to be expressed, then withdrawn — informed her interpretation of Brahms' Klavierstucke, Op. 119. Building from sadness to rage, it was an intriguing performance.

Schumann's "Carnaval" was an ideal vehicle for the kind of emotional outpouring and radical mood shifts she favors. In short order, she waltzed liltingly, shouted out fanfares with bravado, flew about the keys in frenetic fashion and lapsed into a state of melancholy, each of the work's 22 movements exploring a different aspect of the composer's personality.

An encore — Earl Wild's transcription of Gershwin's "The Man I Love" — proved a flamboyant farewell for a pianist with a refreshing combination of youthful energy and musical wisdom.