Tianwa yang paganini biography

Home / General Biography Information / Tianwa yang paganini biography

All of these exploits may seem somewhat strange for a violinist who moved from Beijing to Karlsruhe 12 years ago to study the core of German chamber music, and who still cites her most influential teacher as cellist Anner Bylsma, her most revered ensemble as the Busch Quartet, and who prizes recent chamber collaborations with artists such as violinist Christian Tetzlaff and cellist Maximilian Hornung (see forthcoming interview).

So just where do we move for this concert: to the German Romantics or perhaps Paganini? Yes, Paganini’s Violin Concerto No.

2 -- another unusual choice for an artist who recoils at being called a virtuoso and had actually not performed these concertos since her teens. Yang"s North American debut was in the 2007-2008 season, when she performed at the Virginia Arts Festival with the Virginia Symphony.

She also have her debut performance at Berlin Philharmonic Hall, that same year, which was broadcast live by Deutschland Radio.

She gave recitals in Switzerland and France, and carried out an extensive tour of Germany with Klassische Philharmonie Bonn.

Tianwa Yang is Professor of Violin at the University of the Arts, Bern, Switzerland and University of Music Wuerzburg, Germany. Yang literally dove into the work, letting loose her full spontaneous creativity, and bringing out its wit, play and sheer capriciousness. At the same time, nothing was overdone; it was always the violinist’s sheer delight in the music that communicated and carried things forward. This was also very human playing: sometimes fragile, sometimes thoughtful, sometimes buoyantly seductive, but always fully felt. For once, I felt no ‘kitsch’ in the sentimental little reveries and, especially in the big theme of the last movement, there was lovely poise and restraint. I found it genuinely affecting.

Career

Tianwa Yang began learning to play the violin at age four, and quickly began winning violin competitions.

Tianwa Yang has won several awards during her career including the Volkswagen Foundation prize “Star of Tomorrow” by Seiji Ozawa and the 2006 “Prix Montblanc”. She is grateful to Lin Yaoji, Jörg-Wolfgang Jahn and Anner Bylsma for the musical insight and support they have offered throughout her career.

However, the conductor failed to push lyrical string phrases strongly enough in the Tempo di Menuetto, and did not succeed in getting the orchestra to play sufficiently quietly in the Finale to bring full strength to its contrasts. This was essentially pleasant but not too much more. I have little doubt that most everyone went home thinking about the Paganini.

Tianwa Yang

Edit Profile

杨天娲, 楊天媧

classical violinist

Tianwa Yang is a Chinese classical violinist.

Her Mendelssohn Violin Concertos album earned her the title “one of the best new violinists of the new century” by Musicweb-International. In 2015, she received another ECHO Klassik, this time as "Instrumentalist of the Year."

In Germany, Tianwa Yang has cooperated with orchestras such as the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, the German Symphony Orchestra Berlin, the hr Symphony Orchestra, the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra, the German Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and the German State Philharmonic Orchestra Rhineland-Palatinate.

As for international orchestras, Tianwa Yang has performed with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, among others.

The young violinist, a resident of Germany and heralded by the Detroit News as “the most important violinist to come on the scene in many a year”, performs with such major orchestras as the Detroit, Seattle, Baltimore, Sydney, Vancouver, Toledo, SWR-Baden Baden-Freiburg, WDR-Cologne, MDR-Leipzig, HR Radio Frankfurt, Malmö, Singapore and New Zealand Symphonies; the London, Dresden, Helsinki, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Buffalo, BBC, Deutsche Radio, Warsaw and Royal Liverpool Philharmonics; the Guerzenish Orchester - Cologne, Bayerisches Staatsorchester, Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg and Macau Orchestra.

In North America, she has appeared with the authoritative orchestras in Vancouver, Baltimore, Seattle and Detroit, among others, and in Asia with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, among others.

She has worked with conductors such as Christoph Eschenbach, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Jaap van Zweden and Antoni Wit.

Festivals at which Tianwa Yang has made guest appearances include the Lucerne Festival, the Rheingau Music Festival, the Heidelberger Frühling, the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and the Mozartfest Würzburg.

For this Canadian tour, she was asked to perform No. 1 in Winnipeg and No. 2 in Vancouver.

So how did it go?

She has also performed at the Berlin Philharmonie, Cologne Philharmonie, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Wigmore Hall London and Lincoln Center New York.

Tianwa Yang has an ongoing collaboration with the Naxos label. She has also recently received the ECHO Klassic 2015 award as Violin Instrumentalist of the Year for her recording of Ysaÿe’s Sonatas for Solo Violin, following on acclaimed discs of Wolfgang Rihm and Astor Piazzolla. Her only recording of ‘conventional’ repertoire is seemingly the two Mendelssohn violin concertos, released in 2013.

This was preceded by the Violin Concertos by Castelnuovo-Tedesco and the complete Solo Sonatas by Eugene Ysaye which immediately won several awards. Yet the secret of this performance was that she took the work fully to heart. Conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto’s opening ritornello ushered in orchestral playing that was precise and elegant overall, never overblown. The soloist and ensemble coordinated admirably and the famous question and answer passages later on were realized most effectively.

The remaining items of the programme were comparatively slight. The orchestral transcription of Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor was a reasonable opener, but it did not achieve full Stokowskian ‘bite’. Beethoven’s 8th Symphony was attentively presented but I felt real sparks flying only sporadically: for example, at the end of the first movement and the beginning of the last. The whole symphony did exhibit a rhythmic awareness, with an almost balletic feeling at points.

At the age of 16, she came to Germany on a special DAAD scholarship, thus laying the foundation for her career in Europe. These were preceded by Saint-Saens Works for Violin and Orchestra; Stravinksy’s The Soldier’s Tale as a highly acclaimed complete version; and Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole with Manén’s Concierto Espanol with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra and Darrell Ang.

Considered the worlds best interpreter of the music of Sarasate since Heifetz her complete music for Violin and Orchestra and for Violin and Piano by Sarasate are now released as two complete box sets by Naxos.