12th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition: Silver Medalist (Joyce Yang)

Album review

Here's what the Fort Worth Star-Telegram had to say about Joyce Yang, the Silver Medal winner of the Twelfth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition: "Yang showed a glimpse of what we hope piano performance will be like in the twenty first century: imaginative, technically brilliant, connected to the audience, and historically aware." One can only hope they're wrong, because if this is what piano performance will be like in the twenty first century, the good times are over. Is Yang imaginative? Not particularly: these performances sound like standard-issue competition performances: fast, loud, and shallow. Is Yang technically brilliant? Not especially: she can play fast and she can play loud, but, when the going gets tough, Yang skims across the surface of the piano with only her speed and strength to cover the handfuls of missed notes and slurred passages. Is Yang historically aware? Not really: her Bach sounds like her Liszt and her Liszt sounds like her Scarlatti, that is, like too many notes played too quickly and too loudly to register as anything more than a blur. Is Yang connected to her audience? Yes, very much so: they applaud her madly and the fact that she's won so many other competitions means that her success in Texas was no fluke. Is Yang the future? Only if flashy and shallow are the future, which, of course, they may well be. Harmonia Mundi's sound is clear and detailed, but a bit too cool.
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