Hao Yang, the Chinese-born classical guitar phenom, paid us a visit this week, offering up a solo recital and a master class for the studio. I had heard her twice, both times at the Cleveland guitar event sponsored by Armin Kelly and his Guitars International and hosted by the Cleveland Institute of Music. On both occasions, I walked away thinking: I’ve never heard better guitar playing in my life. And this is not a sentiment I feel often! So I knew I needed my students to hear her play. Fortunately, her schedule accommodated us this semester.

Hao was a long-time student at Curtis Institute, studying there through both her high school and undergraduate years. She worked with Jonathan Leathwood in Denver for her Masters (she was his student when I heard her in concert previously), and is working on an Artist Diploma at Yale now, with Ben Verdery. It is an extraordinary thing when the best player you’ve ever heard is a student!

Her recital program opened with the complete Diabelli Sonata Op 29, No 3, a piece seldom played in its original form, and lying in the unconventional key of F. She demonstrated an authoritative command of the style. I wondered how she’d sound playing an arrangement of a Sonata by Haydn (great!).

She then presented two Mendelssohn works followed by the great masterwork based on music of Mendelssohn, Music of Memory by Nicholas Maw (complete program is at the end of the post). This piece sounds like complex orchestral music on the guitar. It challenges the player to control several narrative elements, show command of dissimilar styles, jump in and out of wildly virtuosic material without difficulty and command a grand dynamic scheme. Hao Yang does all this and more. She proves her mettle with this piece alone, demonstrating a sophisticated and nuanced understanding of the material and the piece’s form, all while playing fantastically difficult passagework with no apparent strain. It is impressive. But more importantly, it is deep music, played in a way that reveals the substance of the score, never succumbing to the temptation to refocus our attention on her and her prowess. Wow.

Her second half featured some more well-trodden territory, with Berkeley’s Sonatina and Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Capriccio Diabolico. She landed both with panache. It was delightful, especially, to hear the Berkeley, an old favorite, played with such attention to detail and musical phrasing. Her finale, packaged as a group of dances, featured Elliot Carter’s Shard (she described it as a jazz-inflected piece, an assertion you might quibble with, though I very much liked the notion), and a Hendrix-inspired outing by Bryan Johanson called Open Up Your Ears.

The next day, she worked with some of the students. Solis Goldsmith was up first, with a performance of Dowland’s Forlorn Hope Fancy. They worked on dynamics and clarity in the chorale section’s thematic entries.

Next up was Grigor Ylli, with a performance of Manjon’s Aire Vasco. They worked on transitions and the shaping of the virtuoso gestures near the end.

Caden Basile followed, with an interpretation of Bach’s Cello Suite II Courante. Hao helped Caden with clarity and dynamics, helping the performance to sound more stylistic.

Next, we heard another Bach offering, the Fugue from the Suite BWV 997, as played by Sam Schollenberger. The lesson looked closely at articulation and contrapuntal clarity.

Finally, Aleksandr Lapshin played for her (my arrangement of the) Song Without Words Op 102, No 4. She was quite engaged by this project, having played some of these Mendelssohn works herself, and offered helpful ideas on emotional pacing and touch in the service of larger musical ideas.

We loved the master class. The concert, happily very well-attended, was brilliant. Hao Yang is an artist we will hear much more about as time passes. Her visit was a highlight of the year.