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XUEFEI YANG | GuitarSaturday, December 7, 2019 | 7:30pmSt. Mark’s Lutheran Church

DEBUSSY La fille aux cheveux de lin

DE FALLA Homenaje a Claude Debussy Miller’s Dance from The Three-Cornered Hat JOAQUIN Invocación y DanzaRODRIGO

LUI & MAO Yao Dance XU CHANGJUN Sword DanceArr. Yang

INTERMISSION

WANG JIAN Silver Cloud Chasing the MoonZHONGArr. Yang CHEN YI Shuo Chang ALBÉNIZ Tango in D from España, Opus 165

ALBÉNIZ Sevilla from Suite Española No. 1, Opus 47Arr. Yang

GRANADOS La Maja de Goya

GRANADOS ZapateadoArr. Yang

NIŇO RICARDO Zambra Mora

PACO PEÑA Colombiana

Xuefei Yang is represented by Askonas Holt15 Fetter Lane, London EC4A 1BW, UK askonasholt.co.uk

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ARTIST PROFILESan Francisco Performances presents Xuefei Yang for the seventh time. She made her SF Performances recital debut in February 2004.

Xuefei Yang is acclaimed as one of the world’s finest classical guitarists. Hailed as a musical pioneer, her fascinating jour-ney began after the Cultural Revolution, a period when Western musical instruments and music were banned. Fei was the first-ever guitarist in China to enter a music school and became the first internation-ally recognized Chinese guitarist on the world stage.

Her first public appearance was at the age of ten and received such acclaim that the Spanish Ambassador in China pre-sented her with a concert guitar. Her debut in Madrid at the age of 14 was attended by the composer Joaquín Rodrigo and, when John Williams heard her play, he gave two of his own instruments to Beijing’s Central Conservatoire especially for her and other advanced students.

Fei is one of the few guitarists whose art-istry connects with audiences far beyond the guitar fraternity. Her international success has led her to be invited to play in more than 50 countries at numerous prestigious venues, and she is frequently invited to play with the world’s leading or-chestras and collaborate with artists such as Ian Bostridge, Rosalind Plowright, and Sir James Galway.

Gramophone praised her as one of the leading innovators of her generation for continuing to build the guitar repertoire.

Fei has made many acclaimed record-ings for major labels. Her first received a

gold disc and her second was selected as “Editor’s Choice” in Gramophone maga-zine. Fei’s recent releases include a solo album Colours of Brazil, (Decca Classics) and Songs from our Ancestors, which con-tinues her successful collaboration with Ian Bostridge.

She has appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Wom-an’s Hour, the BBC Proms, and documenta-ries on BBC and China Central Television. The UK classical music station, Classic FM, named Fei as one of the 100 top classical musicians of our time.

PROGRAM NOTES

La fille aux cheveux de lin

CLAUDE DEBUSSY(1862–1918)

Claude Debussy was one of the most in-fluential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His investigation of sensuous tone colors, development of rich harmonies, and search for ways to express emotion in music remind us of the Roman-tics; but his interest in world music, his use of whole-tone, pentatonic, modal, and octa-tonic scales, as well as his non-functional approach to harmony and supple approach to rhythm were revolutionary. Greatly in-fluenced by the works of French painters and writers he wrote La fille aux cheveux de lin (“The girl with the flaxen hair”) as a response to a poem that evokes a pristine morning in a mythical Scottish past and a beautiful young girl. It is a calmly lyrical work notable for its refined understatement.

Homenaje a Claude Debussy

Miller’s Dance from The Three-Cornered Hat

MANUEL DE FALLA(1876–1946)

Manuel de Falla is the acknowledged classical master of 20th-century Spanish music. His compositions pass from medi-tative repose to dynamic action with great rapidity and are marked by painstaking at-tention to detail and disciplined striving for perfection. Homenaje a Claude Debussy is his only work for guitar and turns the rhythm of the Spanish dance, Habanera, into a deeply felt funeral dirge. Fragments of melody, harp like webs of arpeggios and

harmonics, and a quote from Debussy’s Soi-rée dans Grenade make up the fascinating texture. It is sparsely written with a clarity and economy ideally suited to the guitar.

The Three-Cornered Hat was written for a ballet which told the story of a pompous politician who attempts to seduce the faith-ful wife of the town miller. The passion-ate “Miller’s Dance” is in the rhythm and form of a flamenco Farruca. Falla’s ability to absorb the essence of flamenco into his unique compositional voice is evident and makes the transcription of the orchestral original to the guitar absolutely natural.

Invocación y Danza

JOAQUÍN RODRIGO(1901–1999)

Manuel de Falla’s great successor in Spanish music was Joaquín Rodrigo. At the age of three he lost his sight almost com-pletely as a result of an epidemic of diph-theria. As he himself was later to affirm, this event led to his vocation in music. Rodrigo wrote all his works in braille, dic-tating them subsequently to a copyist. In 1940 the world premiere of the Concierto de Aranjuez for guitar and orchestra brought him world-wide fame. Rodrigo’s Invocación y Danza is subtitled “Homenaje a Manuel de Falla” and is based on a theme from Ho-menaje a Claude Debussy, Falla’s only guitar piece, which was itself written as a hom-age to Debussy and refers musically to De-bussy’s Soiree dans Grenade.

From a subtle opening of harmonics, the Invocación flowers into an impassioned and intricate pattern of melody and broken chords that builds in tension until it is fi-nally released in the fiery Danza. The dance is the Spanish polo, perhaps a reminder of the last of Falla’s Siete canciones populares es-pañolas. After the opening it develops into passages of demanding tremolo and bril-liant runs. It closes with sparse harmonics, a fleeting reference to Falla’s El Amor Brujo, and a final murmuring arpeggio.

Yao Dance

MAO YUAN (B. 1926)LIU TIESHAN(B. 1923)

Mao Yuan is a Chinese composer and for many years one of the resident composers of the China National Opera. Yao Dance, composed in 1952 by Mao Yuan and Liu Tie-

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shan (then a teacher at the Central Conser-vatory in Beijing), is one of the best known and most popular Chinese instrumental compositions of the second half of the 20th century. It is inspired by the long drum dance used by the Yao people of southern China in traditional festivals.

Sword Dance

XU CHANGJUN(B. 1957)

Xu Changjun is a contemporary Chinese composer and President of the Tianjin Con-servatory of Music. He composed Sword Dance when he was a student at Shanghai Conservatory of Music in 1970s with the work of Tang Dynasty poet Du Fu in mind. The music reflects the poetry of lines de-scribing actions “as swift as piercing ar-rows; as splendid as flying dragons; comes like the furious lightning; and goes like the flickering shimmers.” The work was writ-ten for the liuqin, a four-stringed Chinese mandolin with a pear-shaped body and has been arranged for guitar by Xuefei Yang.

Silver Cloud Chasing the Moon

WANG JIAN ZHONG(1933–2016)

Wang Jian Zhong was a Chinese compos-er, pianist, and educator. His works, many of them composed during the Chinese Cul-tural Revolution, bridge Chinese tradition-al music and the Western classical tradition and have made him a household name in his own country. Silver Clouds Chasing the Moon was first made known in the west by the pianist Lang Lang, who played and dis-cussed the piece on British television and on his 2009 concert at the Salle Pleyel in Paris.

Shuo Chang

CHEN YI(B. 1953)

Chen Yi is a Chinese composer who was the first woman to receive a Masters in Music de-gree in composition from the Beijing Central Conservatory of Music and was a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for her composition Si Ji (Four Seasons). Shuo Chang, Chen Yi’s first composition for solo guitar, was written for Xuefei Yang. The composer writes:

“The inspiration of composing this piece came from the art form of musical story tell-ing in China, Shuo Chang. The musical style is

the influence of foreign composers. The principal public musical entertainment was Italian opera while instrumental re-citals featured the works of Chopin and Schumann. The musical nationalism that swept across Europe in the last decades of the 19th century led to the creation of a characteristically Spanish opera and to an interest in the historical and folk roots of Spanish music.

Enrique Granados was one of the great figures of this renaissance of indigenous music. He was also inspired by the grace, elegance and sense of proportion of Span-ish courtly life in 18th century as depicted by Francisco Goya. La Maja de Goya is one of Granados’ Tonadillas, escritas en stile an-tiguo (“little songs written in the old style”) a reference to its classical 18th-century inspiration. It is imbued with a dignified and tender atmosphere. Zapateado is one of Granados’ 6 Piezas sobre cantos populares españoles inspired by the Spanish flamen-co tradition.

Zambra Mora

NIÑO RICARDO(1904–1972)

Niño Ricardo was the most accom-plished flamenco guitarist and composer of the early 20th century and played a significant part in the evolution of the flamenco guitar. Paco de Lucia said “Niño Ricardo was the reigning master of the guitar of our generation. He represented the ultimate in flamenco guitar, the God-father. We learned a lot from him and tried to copy it.” The Zambra is a flamenco dance, typical of the Gypsies of Granada and Andalusia, and based on earlier Ara-bic styles. It was often performed during wedding ceremonies.

Colombiana

PACO PEÑA(B. 1942)

Paco Peña is one of the most impor-tant traditional flamenco guitarists and composers currently performing on the world stage. Colombiana is based on a fla-menco style created in 1931 by the singer Pepe Marchena. Though its use of a Cuban rhythm was criticized by flamenco pur-ists it has been embraced by many impor-tant artists.

Program notes by Scott Cmiel

influenced by Jing Yun Da Gu from northern China, in which the folk musicians would sing, recite, and speak while telling stories, and play a drum in the interludes, while a small group of Chinese traditional instru-mentalists played the accompaniment, led by the plucked instrument Sanxian (a 3-string lute with a long neck and finger-board). The guitar plays all roles in an imag-ined performance of Chinese Shuo Chang, as the singer, the drummer, the ensemble mu-sicians, and the dancers, all in one.”

Tango in D from España, Opus 165

Sevilla from Suite Española No. 1, Opus 47

ISAAC ALBÉNIZ(1860–1909)

Isaac Albéniz was one of the most signifi-cant figures in Spanish cultural circles at the close of the 19th century. A remarkable child prodigy and raconteur, he claimed that he ran away from home at age 12, sailed to Argentina as a stowaway and sub-sequently traveled to America, where he paid his way by playing the piano in honky tonks and spending some time playing at San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf. On his return to Europe he became a serious stu-dent of composition. He fell under the spell of Spain’s indigenous music and was influ-enced to a high degree by both flamenco and the guitar. The legendary Francisco Tárrega made transcriptions of Albéniz’s piano music, and an appealing (though undocumented) tale says that Albéniz, on hearing Tárrega’s performance of his tran-scriptions, declared the music had found its rightful home. Tárrega’s practice of per-forming Albéniz’s music has been enthusi-astically followed by guitarists to this day. His Tango in D Major is more like a sultry Cu-ban habanera than a fiery Argentine tango. Sevilla, related to the joyfully exuberant flamenco sevillanas, gives a captivating im-pression of traditional Spanish idioms.

La Maja de Goya

Zapateado ENRIQUE GRANADOS(1867–1916)

In the late 19th century Spanish mu-sical taste was conservative and under