David Yang

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If Bach is God, Beethoven is Man. Where Bach speaks of eternal truths and the mysteries of the universe. Beethoven defines the essence of what it is to be human. I’ll show you in 40 seconds of music.In 2018 we played Beethoven’s string quartet, Opus 130. The fifth movement, titled “Cavatina” by the composer (a cavatina is a type of song) begins and ends with a slow melody that sandwiches six extraordinary measures. Over those measures he writes “beklemmt.”

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With Michael Brown performance and discussion coming up, David Yang reflects on composers and the act of composing.

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As we all hunker down indoors, “socially distanced” and grimly tracking the progress of COVID-19 across our communities, I thought some kind of distraction might be welcome. In particular, I’ve been thinking about revisiting favorite works from the last nineteen (!) seasons of NCMF. Of course, any such list of favorites will be highly subjective. One friend recently provided me with his personal ranking system:

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Michael Brown's March 2020 performances are postponed. David conveys the sad news but offers some suggestions for music to lessen the corona virus anxiety.

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While we all sit at home in our pajamas struggling to recall what day of the week it is, let’s look back at an extraordinary solo piano recital at St. Paul’s in 2016 when friend of the festival, Amy Yang, brought the house down with “Pictures at an Exhibition.” I not-so-secretly wish I were a pianist; imagine having what amounts to an entire orchestra at your fingertips. OK, real conductors actually do have an orchestra at their fingertips but that’s different. Take it from me: I actually tried conducting once and my debut turned out to be my retirement concert (which is just as well).

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David Yang reflects on 10 years with a string trio

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March is coming, spring is not far behind, and that means piano recital. I’m pleased to report that Michael Brown will be returning for a concert (Saturday, March 28) and, the next day, a demonstration on musical interpretation (Sunday morning, March 29).

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With Jay Reise’s retirement concert at the University of Pennsylvania coming up in a few days, I thought this would be a good time to look back at one of the most extraordinary pieces I have ever commissioned. Jay was Newburyport Chamber Music Festival’s composer-in-residence in 2015. Based on a Japanese folk tale with Rip van Winkle overtones, “The Gift to Urashima Tarō” was the result of a collaboration between NCMF and EXIT Dance.

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REFLECTIONS ON NCMF SUMMER 2019: A Visual Portrait

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I’ve wanted to program this incredible, weird, and magical piece for ages. Written in 1976, French composer Henri Dutilleux’s “Ainsi la nuit” (Thus the Night) has become a modern classic.

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Playing baroque music is a kind of going back to the basic ingredients of our art form. The groundwork for rampant chromaticism and atonality, tone poems, symphonies of a thousand, even epic operatic cycles, was laid down well over three hundred years ago. The Baroque era is when classical music coalesced into the art form we recognize today. And the music of the baroque is as sophisticated and profound as anything that followed.

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In advance of this summer’s festival, Artistic Director David Yang offers some of his program notes on the repertoire: Robert Bradshaw Commission

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After another successful Book Salon on Tuesday, June 18th focusing on Shostakovich and the book "The Noise of Time" (by Julian Barnes), David Yang offered the program note for Shostakovich’s 6th String Quartet featured on the festival this summer.

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2019: Our 18th Season begins with Michael Brown, pianist and composer.

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David Yang shares some of Michael Brown's favorite performances by other artists of the works on Michael's March 30th NCMF concert.

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David Yang reflects on conversation with and performance by Michael Brown.

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In advance of this summer’s festival, Artistic Director David Yang is sending out some of the program notes he has written on the repertoire, in this instance Mozart’s String Quartet in D Minor, K. 421.

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An Introduction to Summer Season #18 (August 2019) - Part I (Part II will contain links to all the pieces.

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