Notes from David Yang

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I’m still coming down from the summer– Schoenberg, Shostakovich, “The Jury,” everything and everyone who turned up

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By all accounts, I think I can report that summer 2023, our twenty-second season, was a smashing success.

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Running a music festival is very much a group effort. Please welcome our newest board member.

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It was as if I were witnessing the birth of a new composition in real time, not unlike a musical version of watching Harry Potter step out from behind the Cloak of Invisibility. 

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For the final concert of Summer 2023 with the world premiere based on Rhina's poem you can pay what you want - one dollar, one hundred dollars.

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Arnold Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet is widely considered to be a visionary work.

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Thanks to an older kid in my orchestra back in 1982, I attended a chamber music camp in Vermont.

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It is the anticipation of knowing what’s coming that might be classical music’s most sublime pleasure.

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Shostakovich’s late quartets provide one of the most intimate confessionals of personal feelings ever vouchsafed by a composer in his music.

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 "Looking back," Paul told me, “I would not have lived the same life without all this music because it is so important to me.”

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If the concerto represents the individual against massed forces, unaccompanied works feel like an internalization of this struggle within an individual.

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In 1772, the rationalism of the Age of Enlightenment ran head-on into early romanticism.

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"Even if they cut off both my hands and I have to hold my pen in my teeth I shall go on writing music."

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If Mozart drove a car, what kind of car would he have? (One thinks about such things when sitting on a transcontinental flight.)

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One of the most original composers of the 20th Century, Janáček had a hot-blooded disposition and a pronounced appetite for the opposite sex.

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After traveling through Belgium, Holland, Germany, and Switzerland, we finally crossed the Alps into Italy

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Have you ever wondered how exactly we keep this thing running? And...some great news!

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Musicians are itinerant; you go where the work is.

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Musicians travel - a lot - so I asked this summer’s artists to list a favorite place or two in the world.

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This winter, I’ve been heading out on pre-dawn rides to train for what was supposed to be a slightly insane three-day, 400-mile bicycle trip

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What is the difference between a modern and "historic" cello and why use one over another?

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Tickets for the 2021 NCMF Winter Baroque concert have gone live and, as promised, the concert will be a doozy.

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In 1982 I received the best birthday present of all time: a Sony Walkman WM-R2.

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I love winter: the low afternoon sun, footsteps crunching on new snow, huddling in bed under a comforter...

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David chats with Sébastien van Kuijk whose visitwas foiled by COVID-19

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Playing baroque music is a kind of going back to the basic ingredients of our art form.

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The concept of infinity is beyond the capacity of the human brain to conceptualize.

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Bringing music to the streets: Covid 19, the summer of 2020, and "quartet caroling" in Newburyport neighborhoods .

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For 19 years, the festival has taken over the town for a week in August.

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March is coming, spring is not far behind, and that means piano recital.

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I’m delighted to announce we have a new board member, Maryellen Moreland.

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The pain started as a dull ache in my abdomen around New Rochelle; by Stamford I was doubled over in agony.

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Goethe said "music is liquid architecture; architecture is frozen music." That sounds good but what does it really mean?

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If Bach is God, Beethoven is Man, and the meaning of "beklemmt."

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Our 18th Season begins with a recital by Michael Brown, pianist and composer.

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I will occasionally post conversations with the artists who were scheduled to come this summer.

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Last year the great Italian composer Ennio Morricone passed away at the age of 91.

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There were a few weeks when Jon Deak emailed me a page of the manuscript every day.

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The complicated personal background to Shostakovich’s 6th String Quartet.

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David reflects on composers, compositions, and the act of composing.

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Does anyone in Newburyport really need an introduction to the National Treasure that is Rhina?

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Recently I’ve noticed the call of a Very Loud Bird I don’t recall hearing outside my window in the morning.

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David talks with composer Ania Vu about her new work written for the NCMF Winter Baroque concert.

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The feedback from NCMF Winter Baroque has been rolling in and is overwhelmingly positive.

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‍‍I started cooking in grad school when I procured a copy of Marcella Hazan’s “Classic Italian Cookbook.”

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David offers some suggestions for music to lessen the coronavirus anxiety.

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There is a new look for Winter Baroque this year (tickets go on sale today!).

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Some of you have been wondering what we are going to do this summer.

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In 1785, Mozart dedicated a new set of six string quartets to his friend, colleague, and mentor, Josef Haydn.

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An Introduction to Summer Season #18.

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This summer we’ll be performing Shostakovich’s String Quartet in Eb Major, No. 9.

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After marinating indoors for the better part of a year and a half, we’ve all been desperate for live music.

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Set aside August 4 to August 15 because NCMF is on for summer 2021 with six concerts in six days.

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Despite general weirdness everywhere, we’re determined to make NCMF 2020 joyful.

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When the festival started in 2001, I hoped it would become a kind of second home to my family and me.

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I met Jon about twenty years ago over breakfast on the Upper West Side.

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I’ve returned to the tried and true holiday formula of not programming anything composed after 1750.

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It seems that Covid 19 had one last surprise in store for us for the summer.

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Only one ticket left to Michael Brown’s upcoming piano recital in Newbury.

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Is there such a thing as a perfect piece of music, something that never gets old?

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Just think what was going in the Roaring '20s in art, literature, science, politics, society.

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Reflections on the Newburyport Chamber Music Festival of 2019: A Visual Portrait

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After the call informing me that one of the artists had tested positive...

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Artistic Director David Yang's notes on the new piece for 2019.

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I’ve wanted to program this incredible, weird, and magical piece for ages.

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When I was a teenager, I got a job one summer working as a bike messenger in New York.

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You may have seen me around Newburyport or playing viola in the summer concert.

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Thomas Baltzar’s jewel of a piece, his Prelude, packs more in two minutes than some composers stuff into an entire symphony.

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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.

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As we all hunker down indoors, I thought some kind of distraction might be welcome.

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Why can’t I get enough of sad music and why does it feel so good?

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For the holidays, I thought I’d take off my Artistic Director hat and put on another.

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I feel a slight chill and sense of awe when I walk into a cathedral. I get the same feeling of immensity when I listen to the sixth suite.

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I asked Michael to share some of his favorite performances by other pianists.

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David reflects on 10 years of performing, recording, and living as a member of a touring string trio.

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Summer 2022 features arguably the most perfect of Mozart’s perfect quartets, the C Major.

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The first LP I ever owned was a collection of marches by John Philip Sousa.

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There is a transcendent moment near the beginning of this quartet that makes my heart leap in my chest.

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"...suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray..."

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One of the most extraordinary pieces I have ever commissioned.

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There are certain very specific and individualized sounds we associate with childhood.

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Sunday, June 6 the Newburyport Chamber Music Festival is back in action.

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I love playing with Clancy and also just hanging with this terrific musician and human being.

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It seems that around this time of year people are specifically drawn to reassuring music.