Guitarist Xuefei Yang’s Return to San Francisco

Guitarist Xuefei Yang (from her SFP event page)

Last night St. Mark’s Lutheran Church saw the return of Chinese guitarist Xuefei Yang. Yang made her recital debut with San Francisco Performances (SFP) in February of 2004; and last night saw her seventh SFP appearance, presented jointly with the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts Dynamite Guitars series. The program was framed by a diversity of Spanish compositions, beginning with an exploration of French influences, while the central portion was devoted to a sampling of Chinese compositions, many arrangements of works originally played on Chinese plucked instruments.

The “French connection” was to Claude Debussy by way of the only composition for guitar written by Manuel de Falla, “Pour le tombeau de Claude Debussy” (for the tomb of Claude Debussy). The piece is a habanera that reflects on Debussy’s “La soirée dans Grenade” (evening in Granada), the second of the three solo piano compositions he collected under the title Estampes (prints). Falla subsequently arranged his piece for piano and then orchestrated it for Homenajes (homages), a suite of four memorial compositions. Yang established Debussy’s influence by beginning her program with “La fille aux cheveux de lin” (the girl with the flaxen hair), the eighth piece in the first book of Préludes composed for solo piano.

This “chain of influence” was then continued with Joaquín Rodrigo’s “Invocación y danza” (invocation and dance), composed in 1961 as a homenaje for Falla. This piece, in turn, draws upon Falla’s memorial composition for Debussy. However, the dance portion is a polo, one of the flamenco dance forms, which concludes Falla’s Siete canciones populares españolas (seven Spanish folksongs) collection; and there is also an explicit evocation of a motif from Falla’s “El amor brujo” (love, the magician).

This all made for an engaging approach to musical influence, reinforced by Yang playing the Debussy and Falla selections without interruption. The clarity of her execution allowed the attentive listener to appreciate the cross-composition influences to the richest extent. This made for one of those rare occasions where both theory and practice were honored on equal terms.

The principal composers for the concluding Spanish selection were Isaac Albéniz and Enrique Granados. Both of these musicians were pianists, and Yang performed her own arrangements of their compositions. As was the case with her Debussy performance, the arrangements honored the thematic content, never losing track of the initial rhetorical impact. Yang was a bit shy when it came to the percussive technique behind Granados’ “Zapateado,” which concludes his 6 Piezas sobre cantos populares españoles (six pieces based on popular Spanish songs); but the overall Spanish spirit was as rich as it had been in the first half of the program.

More unique to the program were the compositions and arrangements of Chinese music. Yang provided some spoken background for these selections. Sadly, however, her microphone technique was decidedly inferior to her guitar technique; and she is still not particularly comfortable with English diction. Nevertheless, even without explanatory details the attentive listener could recognize many of the influences behind the music, including efforts to evoke the sonorities of more traditional instruments. There was also an impressive account of “Shuo Chang” by the contemporary Chinese composer Chen Yi, whose music I have encountered on recordings from time to time. “Shuo Chang” was her first composition for solo guitar, and it was written for Yang. To the best of my knowledge, this was my first concert encounter with her music; and Yang’s performance left me eager for future encounters.