Pianist to perform Rachmaninoff’s ‘Rhapsody’
If you’re looking for romance amid all the mistletoe and holly, pianist Joyce Yang will perform Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini” in Santa Fe this weekend.
The South Korean-born musician will join the Performance Santa Fe Orchestra at the Lensic Performing Arts Center for two performances on Sunday.
The “Rhapsody” is Yang’s favorite concerto. Famed for its use as the theme for the 1980 film “Somewhere In Time,” it’s really an upside-down version of the Paganini original violin piece. Bill Murray would go on to play it in the 1993 movie “Groundhog Day.”
When Rachmaninoff penned the piece in 1934, he said, “This one is for my agent,” evidently sensing its commercial potential.
“I think it’s one of the greatest things ever written,” Yang said in a telephone interview from her Alabama home. “He weaves the 24 variations back-toback. It’s so fleeting that you don’t even know you’re moving from one theme to another.
Yang first played the work with the Albany (N.Y.) Symphony at age 16.
“It was terrifying to play it for the first time,” she said. The music has matured with her.
“It’s like you’re drawing with 10 crayons,” she explained, “and every time you play it you gain one other color.”
The 31-year-old musician started playing piano at 4 with her aunt as her teacher. By age 9, she was in New York playing for the Juilliard School piano chair. She began studying in Juilliard’s pre-college division and made her first concert tour at 14.
“I don’t think kids fall in love with music,” she said. “I think kids fall in love with the instrument.”
Her aunt used the piano as a reward, she said.
“Because you cleaned your room, I’ll teach you an additional song.”
She says she finally really heard
herself at age 9 as she was practicing Beethoven.
“No one was home; it was just me. I was so ecstatic; it was very exciting that I could bend the sounds. For the first time, I went to my lesson and had a point of view.”
When the then-9-year-old auditioned for the Juilliard’s Yoheved Kaplinsky, the great teacher told her mother to move immediately to New York.
“I never sat down and said, ‘My dream is to be a pianist,’ ” Yang said. “I just found myself on stage.”
Yang gained international renown when she won the silver medal at the 2005 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. She was 19, the competition’s youngest participant at the time.