You have to experience how the grandiose Tianwa Yang with her highly tense piano partner Nicholas Rimmer does not offer the unruly, crazy, even tricky C major Fantasy by Franz Schubert in a mixture of smooth perfection and soulful friendliness, but lives out the violent contrasts and in all directions, bringing them to glowing life from the most delicate pianissimo to artistic breakneck feats with rhythmic pinpoint fire and flashing top tones. It has something of a daredevil tightrope walk that takes the listener’s breath away, and yet the two musicians manage to do the almost impossible, namely to force together Schubert’s most sweeping poetry with his more than idiosyncratic idea of ambitious virtuosity, which by no means accommodates the instruments. This is what happened in the acoustically dry Burkardus Hall of the Himmelpforten Monastery in Würzburg during the Mozart Laboratory at this year’s Würzburg Mozart Festival. Schubert wrote his foolhardy piece in 1827 under the impression of the Bohemian violinist Josef Slawik, who emulated the legendary Niccolò Paganini, the violinist of all violinists. In 1828 Schubert then experienced Paganini personally in Vienna and thought he had heard “the voice of an angel”.
She is one of the great violinists: Tianwa Yang – culture
