Sarasate: Music for Violin and Orchestra Volume 2 (Incls 'Carmen Fantasy')

"All throughout, Yang seduces, teases, serenades, and sings with her unique sound. How to describe the Yang sound? It's more aggressive than most in attacking the violin's lowest notes, which have a full but slightly rough sound that can only be described (in Sarasate, at least) as sexy. It has an almost unreal facility for harmonics, pizzicati, and double stops so well blended together that they don't sound like double stops at all. It has a genius for occasional notes which are just murmured, to catch our ears and pull them in closer. It's got big legato phrases that seem to explode across the concert hall in their brilliance. It demands to be heard."
(MusicWeb Dec 2010)

"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."
(10/10 ClassicsToday Jan 2011)

Dazzlingly virtuosic fireworks, spirited passion and astonishing technique combine in the youthful Chinese violinist Tianwa Yang who leaves the critics grasping for superlatives whenever she plays.

In this second volume of Naxos's cycle of Sarasate's complete works for violin and orchestra she again teams with the orchestra founded by the legendary Spanish violinist-composer in 1879 to present two of his orchestral masterpieces, the famous Carmen Fantasy and the sadly neglected Romeo and Juliet Fantasy, as well as several other utterly delightful, and fiendishly difficult, concert pieces.