Wenting Kang Debuts on Blue Griffin Records

courtesy of Classical Music Communications

Not too long ago Blue Griffin Records released Mosaic, the debut album of violist Wenting Kang. (She had previously appeared as soloist on the Boston Modern Orchestra Project album of serenades composed by George Perle.) As of this writing, this new offering is only available for MP3 download. Sadly, none of the “usual suspects” sources include the accompanying booklet as part of the download. The good news is that, for the most part, the music speaks for itself.

Two of the tracks on the album are solo performances. The less familiar of these is Akira Nishimura’s “Fantasia on Song of the Birds.” This refers to “El cant dels ocells,” a Catalan song that serves as both a Christmas carol and a lullaby. Pablo Casals gave this tune recognition on a larger scale when he arranged it for cello and piano. Kang’s performance of Nishimura’s fantasia is followed by Casals’ arrangement, in which she plays the cello part with her piano accompanist Sergei Kvitko.

Kang’s other solo track is one of her most technically challenging offerings. She performs Francisco Tárrega’s “Recuerdos de la Alhambra,” whose tremolo rhetoric continues to be a major challenge to all serious guitarists. Violinist Ruggiero Ricci was bold enough to arrange the score for solo violin, and the result become one of his more popular encore selections. Kang basically performs Ricci’s arrangement, offering an interpretation that reflects on both Tárrega’s reflection on the palace in Granada and Ricci’s equally challenging arrangement of that reflection.

Kvitko accompanies Kang on all of the remaining tracks. Several of the selections are further performances of music for cello. These include two compositions by Gabriel Fauré, his Opus 24 “Élégie” and the Opus 77 “Papillon,” as well the arrangement by cellist Emilio Colón of the complete cycle of the seven Canciones populares españolas (popular Spanish songs) composed by Manuel de Falla. Similarly, Kang seems to be playing directly from the clarinet part for the rhapsody that Claude Debussy composed for that instrument; and she takes the same approach to the vocal line In Maurice Ravel’s Opus 51 “Vocalist-étude en forme de habanera.”

One of my fellow undergraduates liked to say that the viola was what a violin aspired to be when it grew up. There is, in that respect, a sense of maturity that pervades Kang’s approach to compositions, including those that were not written with the viola in mind. That approach rises above the familiar rhetorical stances we encounter in both violin and cello recitals, reflecting, instead, on the rhetorical richness that lies between these two extremes. Writing as one that has long enjoyed that richness in performances by Kim Kashkashian, I welcome another violist in my list of favorites!