Friday, November 17, 2023

Omni Foundation Releases Video of Prodigy

The Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts began this week with the release of the video account of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) Guitar Youth Orchestra performing Clarice Assad’s “Bluezilian” as the “overture” for the Maestros of 50 Oak Street program. It is now the end of the week, and Omni is marking the occasion with the release of a second new video. While “Bluezilian” was performed by SFCM students, the new video presents a performance by a nine-year-old guitar prodigy.

Screen shot of Xinyan Sun’s rapid-fire fingering in her performance of the final movement of Leo Brouwer’s first guitar sonata, reflecting on a vigorous toccata by the seventeenth-century Italian composer Bernardo Pasquini

The name of the performer is Xinyan (Cynthia) Sun. The video presents her playing the second and third movements of Leo Brouwer’s first sonata for solo guitar. The entire sonata consists of only three movements; and the first of those movements, “Fandangos y Boleros,” is the longest, providing a reflective account of music for popular dance forms (with a sideways nod to Ludwig van Beethoven). Both of the following movements played by Sun reflect the influence of another composer. The second is a sarabande with “thematic influence” provided by keyboard music by Alexander Scriabin marking his departure from conventional tonality. This is followed by a vigorous account of a toccata that draws upon the “Toccata con lo Scherzo del cucco” (toccata with the scherzo of the cuckoo), by the seventeenth-century Italian composer Bernardo Pasquini.

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