Xuefei Yang Concert Review

Saturday’s concert at Bethesda’s Westmoreland Congregational Church featured Xuefei Yang in her first area performance. As meticulous a technician as she is a musician, the Chinese guitarist avoids the rubato-filled rhythmic affectations so many guitarists espouse and she manages to highlight the individual lines of contrapuntal passages while still maintaining a sense of momentum and rhythmic flow.

,p>In pieces (or arrangements of pieces) by Bach, Granados, Tárrega, Brouwer and Jobim, her emphasis was on clarity and balance. The 10 dance movements of Granados’s “Valses Poeticos” emerged with highly individual personalities, and the variations of Tárrega’s “Carnival of Venice” built in complexity and virtuosity to a climax tinged with humor.

This is about a year old, but I just found it today.