XuefeiYang

Press

• Recital

  Boston

  Mar 2023

  • The unusual aspect of Yang’s Saturday evening concert lies in her ability to combine multiple genres, perform with an improvisatory spirit, and engage with generosity. This artist has done much to expand the classical guitar repertoire, through amalgamating and expanding genres.

    • Boston Musical Intelligencer
    • 15 March 2023

• Guitar Favourites

  recording

  Mar 2023

  • Barrios's La catedral is another highlight, with an exquisitely spacious "Saudade" and an Allegro solemne of fleet majesty. Here, as throughout, Yang brings to her trademark lightness and sweetness of tone and impeccable technique a greater expressive freedom than ever before

    • Gramophone
    • 05 March 2023

• Sketches of China

  recording

  Nov 2020

  • Truth, fantasy, boldness and delicacy. Listening to Chinese classical guitarist Xuefei Yang’s latest album is like watching a parade of exquisitely rendered beasts on a silk handscroll...If this gorgeous recording finds its ideal pictorial analogue in a painted scroll, Xuefei Yang’s playing can best be compared to the spontaneity and control of a master calligrapher.

    • Gramophone Magazine
    • 08 November 2020

  • This is a seriously virtuosic performance that takes “classical guitar” in many exciting new directions.

    • Classical Guitar Magazine
    • 01 December 2020

  • A landmark release, not only of guitar music but of the growing interaction between Chinese and Western musical cultures.

    • All Music
    • 02 September 2020

• Recital

  Herbst Theater San Francisco

  Apr 2017

  • The high point of the evening was Yang’s arrangement of Sword Dance by Xu Chang-Jun, president of the Tianjin Conservatory of Music. Inspired by poetry from the era of the Tang Dynasty by poet Du Fu, the music portrays images of piercing arrows, flying dragons, and furious lightning with tremolo, rasgueado strums, and percussive attacks. The modal work was written originally written for the liuqin, a four-stringed Chinese plucked instrument with a pear-shaped body. The skillful arrangement and performance opened a new world of sounds for the classical guitar.

    • San Francisco Classical Voice
    • 10 April 2017

• Songs from our ancestors

  recording

  Sep 2016

  • the converging paths of Ian Bostridge, 49, and Xuefei Yang, 37, have met in a programme of music that conjoins their British and Chinese heritage, while calling upon a gift they share – the capacity to make the voice or instrument express character... Yang, for her part, is able to draw from the guitar the sound of many other instruments, which makes her a particularly exciting accompanist, as versatile as a pianist but capable of greater intimacy.

    • The Independent
    • 21 November 2014

  • There’s a lot going on here, a lot for the ear to assimilate, but it’s a disc that really comes into focus with repeated listens... Yang reinvents herself convincingly throughout the disc – now a troubadour, now a folk musician, now a concert-hall soloist. Her selections from Chinese repertoire are tantalising – hints of an alien musical world that, here, feels far closer than you’d imagine.

    • Gramophone Magazine
    • 03 November 2014

  • Xuefei Yang’s playing is sensitive, agile and graceful, both when functioning as accompanist and on the instrumental solos. Although using various guitars throughout, when appropriate she vividly evokes lute, mandolin and even the Chinese four-stringed pipa and zither-like guqin, using a modified seven-string guitar to realise the Mong dynasty tune Flowing Water, probably dating from Shakespeare’s time. Recording ★★★★★ Performance ★★★★★

    • BBC Music Magazine
    • 01 December 2016