Sarasate: Music for Violin and Orchestra Volume 3

 

“Despite doing without any of his most popular pieces, this third instalment of Sarasate's music for violin and orchestra makes a most attractive programme...Yang is splendidly equipped as a Sarasate violinst, with her clear tone, pure intonation, impressive dexterity and light touch...[Her] playing is consistently lovely, capturing an essential part of the music's spirit”  --Gramophone Magazine, October 2011

Tianwa Yang (violin)
Orquesta Sinfónica de Navarra, Ernest Martínez Izquierdo

Acclaimed as ‘an uncommonly brilliant young violinist’ Tianwa Yang continues her highly praised survey of Pablo de Sarasate’s music for violin and orchestra.

The Magic Flute Fantasy is a masterpiece of the genre à la Paganini, while the Gounod Fantasy (his second) is a miracle of lightness. The highly popular Navarra, the charming Muiñiera with its bagpipe effects, the bewitching Venetian Barcarolle and the Introduction et Caprice-Jota with its barcarolle-like beginning and dancing finale coming thrillingly to life on this album.

 

Sarasate: Music for Violin and Orchestra Volumen 2

You’re going to love this one. Now I have to confess, I’m not normally a fan of the virtuoso violin school--heck, of any violin school. Sarasate has a big advantage, though: he’s working with great tunes. Who doesn’t love Carmen? Or the bel canto sexiness of Romeo and Juliet? Canciones rusas contains the theme that became famous as the “Wet Nurses’ Dance” in Stravinsky’s Petrushka (Balakirev also used it). La chasse is remarkably atmospheric and poetic, the Jota de Pablo a celebration of the composer’s Spanish heritage. Okay, El canto del ruiseñor (The Song of the Nightingale) is one of those chirpy bird things that makes you want to throw the little critter down some oxygen-depleted Chilean mine shaft, but there are worse ways to go than death by chronic cuteness.

Tianwa Yang is a sensationally talented young violinist. She has technique to burn. Her harmonics (and there are a lot of them) dazzle with their precision and lack of “hissiness”; her left-hand pizzicatos, special bowing effects, runs, and arpeggios fit naturally within a phrase rather than sticking out like the gaudy banners on a parade float. Best of all, she has a beautiful tone in cantabile phrases (check out the Romeo and Juliet fantasy) and a really seductive way with rubato that conveys emotion without distorting the rhythm. 

Splendidly accompanied by Ernest Izquierdo and his Navarra players, this is a youthful, vibrant collection that just may change your mind about the virtuoso violin repertoire. -- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com, December 2010

Sarasate: Music for Violin and Orchestra Volume 1

Such mellifluous and delightful music deserves the widest possible exposure. There was a time when the typical violin recital (with piano) consisted primarily of this kind of music, roundly sneered at by snooty “artistes” who replaced it with penitential programs consisting of all the Bach Sonatas and Partitas at a sitting, or all the Brahms sonatas, or other forms of aural flagellation. Somewhere between seriousness unto death and cloying fluff there has to be a happy medium. The fact is that Pablo Sarasate was a very good composer of the virtuoso school, and these performances—always stylish and tasteful but technically brilliant—do him full justice.

The most popular item here will be Zigeunerweisen, but Airs espagnols and the Fantasie are more substantial still. La Dame Blanche is in fact a very beautiful opera, and Sarasate’s arrangement couldn’t be lovelier, or more affectingly played. Most of the other works have a Spanish flavor and reveal Sarasate in his element. 

Alternately vivacious and soulful, they are wonderful pieces and they hold no obvious terrors for Tianwa Yang. Whether she’s slipping a few harmonics into insanely fast passage-work, or firing off a volley of left-hand pizzicatos, she has all of this music under firm control. Ernest Martínez Izquierdo and the Navarra orchestra accompany with equal verve, and the sonics are excellent in all respects. --David Hurwitz. ClassicsToday.com, December 2010

Sarasate: VIolin and Piano Music

Among the great virtuoso violinists of his generation, Pablo Sarasate not only inspired concertos and other works for solo violin from leading contemporary composers, but demonstrated his incredible skill in a series of compositions based on dances from his native Spain.