{"id":11058,"date":"2018-09-27T15:15:04","date_gmt":"2018-09-27T22:15:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/?p=11058"},"modified":"2018-10-04T10:14:30","modified_gmt":"2018-10-04T17:14:30","slug":"xuefei-yang-rediscovers-her-roots-an-interview-and-videos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/xuefei-yang-rediscovers-her-roots-an-interview-and-videos\/","title":{"rendered":"Xuefei Yang Rediscovers Her Roots: An Interview and Videos"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>BY BLAIR JACKSON (From the Winter 2015 Classical Guitar)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.xuefeiyang.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Xuefei Yang<\/a> saved the best for last. Although the previous two hours of her concert at Oklahoma City University&#8217;s beautiful and acoustically sumptuous Petree Recital Hall had been faultless\u2014an eclectic m\u00e9lange of early masters (Dowland and Bach), classic choices (Rodrigo and Alb\u00e9niz) and adventurous modern pieces (Brouwer, Goss, and Chen Yi)\u2014it was her encore selection that seemed to resonate most strongly with the large crowd on that second night of the Guitar Foundation of America&#8217;s convocation in late June.<\/p>\n<p>It was a short piece called <em>The Fisherman&#8217;s Song at Eventide<\/em>, a dreamy traditional Chinese folk song she had transcribed herself for solo guitar and had originally planned to play a little earlier in the second half of her concert. After an evening of so much serious and technically challenging music, the lilting sonority of <em>Fisherman<\/em> seemed to float and dance through the hushed hall, as it conjured images of the rural China of our collective imagination. In a sense, the piece felt like a natural choice for the best-known guitarist to emerge from China so far, yet it was actually quite a bold selection\u2014after all, Yang&#8217;s musical education in her homeland was steeped in the same Western composers guitar students in Europe or the Americas would have studied, and for the past 15 years she&#8217;s been based in London.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEverybody in China knows <em>The Fisherman&#8217;s Song<\/em>,\u201d Yang had told me the previous afternoon, as we talked in an empty lounge off the lobby of the Oklahoma City hotel where she and other artists playing at the four-day GFA confab (including Pavel Steidl, Pablo Villegas, and others) were staying. \u201cIt&#8217;s normally played on a guzheng, which is this plucked [ table ] instrument with 13 strings and sounds a bit like a harp or a zither. The arpeggios [in the song] sound like water to me; so beautiful. It took me two months to figure out [how to arrange it for the guitar], but I\u2019m proud of it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/5aT2BfxX8As\" width=\"780\" height=\"439\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>When Yang started playing at the age of seven, three decades ago, \u201cclassical guitar was not like violin and piano, which have a much longer tradition in China. Guitar is a new thing. Before I was born, during the Cultural Revolution [a period in Communist China during which the influence of Western culture was largely banned], guitar was regarded as a \u2018hooligan instrument,\u2019\u201d she says with a smile.<\/p>\n<p>She was the first guitarist in the country to enter a conservatory there: \u201cIt sounds nice, but there were a lot of barriers to conquer and we didn\u2019t really have any Chinese repertoire to play; maybe a simple melody for beginners. But I really wanted to play something substantial [from China], and this concept actually became stronger for me after I went to England. In China, even now, the trendy things are Western things; Chinese folk music is not trendy. When I was younger in China, I was trying to play the big pieces, the typical things [by Western composers], but when I went to England and started a professional career, I asked myself, \u2018What is my identity?\u2019 I\u2019m a Chinese artist. There are French artists and Russian artists and Spanish artists, and they have their own heritage to play\u2014this big heritage of music, some of which I have learned. But I feel <em>my<\/em> culture is rich, too, and I want to do something that expresses my identity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>The Fisherman&#8217;s Song at Eventide<\/em> is just one of 19 short pieces on Yang&#8217;s appealing new CD, <em>Heartstrings<\/em>, and the only overt nod to her nationality; most of the rest are culled from many of the big names associated with the traditional and modern guitar repertoire (Falla, Barrios, Alb\u00e9niz, Pujol, Llobet, Brouwer, Dyens, York), and a wide range of other classical composers (Debussy, Elgar, Schubert, Paganini, Mussorgsky). It covers an impressively broad range of styles and the emphasis is on more melodic, accessible pieces. The playing, needless to say, is impeccable\u2014delicate on the ballads, technically flawless, and even dazzling in places. The recording, by engineer Arne Akselberg at Potton Hall in Suffolk, England in August 2014, is bright and full of life.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wanted to do an album that might get to a wider audience, with lighter and shorter pieces,\u201d she explains. \u201cI want it to appeal to somebody who is not just a classical-guitar player. If I record the Benjamin Britten piece I\u2019m going to play tomorrow [<em>Nocturnal After John Dowland<\/em>], that\u2019s going to appeal mainly to classical guitarists or classical-music lovers. But I want this CD to be more appealing to people even if they don\u2019t listen to classical guitar or classical music.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want to do everything,\u201d she continues. \u201cI can play really serious, obviously, but I also like to do light things. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s anything wrong with playing lighter pieces. And there\u2019s nothing wrong with being &#8216;commercial&#8217; if the quality is good.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Besides arranging The <em>Fisherman<\/em>, Yang also worked up her own solo-guitar transcriptions for several other songs on <em>Heartstrings<\/em>, including Manuel de Falla\u2019s <em>Spanish Dance<\/em> from <em>La Vida Breve<\/em>, which she had previously played as duet with a cellist; Alb\u00e9niz\u2019s <em>Torre Bermeja<\/em>, which follows the composer\u2019s piano score more closely than some guitar arrangements; and Edward Elgar\u2019s lively <em>Salut d\u2019Amour<\/em>, written originally for violin and piano\u2014\u201cI\u2019ve never heard anyone play it as a solo piece,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I like to do transcriptions,\u201d she continues. \u201cIt\u2019s one way to expand the repertoire of the guitar, which I want to do. Even if other guitarists have done [transcriptions] of some piece, I like to see what I can do with it. Like with the Bach violin concertos [recorded for her 2012 CD <em>Bach Concertos<\/em>, a collaboration with the Elias String Quartet], I spent a lot of time really studying the score and comparing different versions. When I do a transcription, I know every note and why I put this note here\u2014why this octave and not a lower octave?\u2014and why I kept this part <em>this<\/em> long. And you do your fingering accordingly. If you play other people\u2019s transcriptions, they have their own idea, but if I want a brighter sound I will use more open strings, and if I want a darker sound I won\u2019t have so many open strings. Especially playing Baroque music, there can be so many options for the fingering, but that\u2019s part of the fun.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/E-XtSQdVaLk\" width=\"780\" height=\"430\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In keeping with her desire to control as many aspects of her creative life as possible, Yang produced <em>Heartstrings<\/em> herself. \u201cFor a solo album I can do it,\u201d she says, \u201cbut you need a good producer on a concerto recording\u2014someone with a very good ear. In a way they\u2019re like a conductor behind the scenes, keeping track of everything. When you go to a concert, it sounds fine, you don\u2019t notice small things. But through the microphones you hear this instrument and that instrument don\u2019t quite match, and maybe the sound of bassoon is not quite in tune, all sorts of things. When it\u2019s just me, I know what I\u2019m looking for and want to hear, and by now, too, I\u2019ve done a lot of recording.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen you record with an orchestra, of course, it\u2019s different. For me, the hard part of concerto recording is I always want to really spend a lot of time with it\u2014with solo recording I want to start at 10 a.m. and go to 10 p.m., no problem. But with an orchestra they have musician union\u00a0 rules. It seems like every 15 minutes they have a break, and no more than six sessions a day or something like that, so it\u2019s a little harder to\u00a0 stay focused. The orchestra is like a big elephant,\u201d she laughs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI treat live performance and recording as two different things,\u201d she adds. \u201cWhen I play for the microphone in studio it\u2019s totally different from playing onstage. Sometimes in the studio [on this project] I\u2019d listen back and hear maybe too much and think, \u2018I need to hold back a little bit.\u2019 \u201cWhen I play a big venue, I\u2019m often amplified and I think some of the nuances get lost. But in the recording studio, especially with these super-sensitive mics, you don\u2019t need to worry so much about projecting, or about chair noises, or the audience coughing. So for me the recording is about details, and that\u2019s what I focus on.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cClassical-guitar players spend much time in their rooms practicing and playing by themselves\u2014and of course that\u2019s important\u2014but some of them don\u2019t really know how to play <em>out <\/em>to an audience; they kind of play for themselves like they\u2019re still in a small room. Intimate is good, but you have to play out for an audience. The studio is different and you need to find a balance.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Having mastered almost every style of classical guitar you\u2019d care to mention, created her own transcriptions, and also commissioned works by notable modern writers, the question naturally arises: Does she have any plans to compose, too?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cComposing is something I really want to try in the future,\u201d she says without hesitation, \u201cbut at the same time, I know I\u2019m not going to be Beethoven, or even Brouwer, whose work I admire so much. Right now, I feel I\u2019m the most appropriate person to transcribe Chinese traditional music, because I know guitar so well and I know my culture so well. The other thing I can do is encourage Chinese composers to write for me. Before, I had Western composers write for me\u2014Stephen Goss [who was at her GFA concert, where she played his <em>Illustration to Book of Songs<\/em>, written for Yang in 2014] and Domeniconi [<em>I Ching<\/em>]. Chen Yi was the first Chinese composer to write for me [\u201cShuo Chang,\u201d also played at GFA]. I want to play more Chinese repertoire, but the truth is we need more of <em>everything<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UafIAw7a04U\" width=\"780\" height=\"439\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This past summer, too, Yang agreed to be the artistic director of a guitar festival and competition in Changsha, China, [she still plays that role four years later\u2014ed.] enticing fellow guitarists Jason Vieaux, Roland Dyens, and Johannes Moller, to join her as judges and players there. \u201cFor the competition, we used all new pieces by contemporary composers, because the new repertoire is very important. There are no recordings or videos of these pieces yet online, so they had to figure out how to play them. In China, so many guitarists are very good at copying pieces\u2014they find recordings of pieces by Sor or Giuliani or other things from the traditional repertoire and they copy them very well, but that\u2019s not a good way to learn music. So we found these new pieces they can\u2019t copy,\u201d she adds with a laugh. \u201cI got involved to raise international awareness of classical guitar in China. That\u2019s something that interests me and I want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BY BLAIR JACKSON (From the Winter 2015 Classical Guitar) Xuefei Yang saved the best for last. Although the previous two hours of her concert at Oklahoma City University&#8217;s beautiful and acoustically sumptuous Petree Recital Hall had been faultless\u2014an eclectic m\u00e9lange of early masters (Dowland and Bach), classic choices (Rodrigo and Alb\u00e9niz) and adventurous modern pieces (Brouwer, Goss, and Chen Yi)\u2014it was her encore selection that seemed to resonate most strongly with the large crowd on that second night of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":11063,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Xuefei-Yang-1.jpg?fit=804%2C498&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}