Review: Xuefei Yang (Saturday), Wiltshire Music Centre (From Wiltshire Times)

Review: Xuefei Yang (Saturday), Wiltshire Music Centre

2:52pm Friday 3rd December 2010 in Theatre & Arts

Xuefei Yang produces guitar playing as exquisite as she is beautiful.

It’s not so much the fire and passion she can implant into pieces by the guitar greats – Rodrigo, Albeniz, Sainz de la Maza and Jobin – but the sublime delicacy of her pianissimo chording in Bach and Chopin.

Bach’s Violin Sonata No 2 in A minor, obviously written with the dexterity of the violin in mind, seemed to gain even more beauty in the arrangement by Xuefei Yang: Bach’s precision was there gilded with enchantment.

Where encores are sought and given, the old rule is to send the audience home with tranquillity in mind. And this she did in full measure: Recuerdos de la Alhambra, by Francisco Tarrega, a title which means memories of the Alhambra – the palace in Granada – was simply transcendental.