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| In the right hands, the classical guitar can create all of the sounds of the orchestra. |
| Chinese guitarist Yang Xue-Fei clearly has the right hands. She played to a packed Peck School of the Arts Recital Hall at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on Tuesday evening, coaxing absolute magic from the instrument. |
| Yang Xue-Fei is an absolute master of the instrument, but her considerable technical command of the guitar is only part of the equation. She is a remarkable musician. |
| Her effortless style of playing brings individual musical lines into focus, framing them with the moving lines and harmonies of the piece they are a part of. She gives those lines such autonomy that the listener could swear they are coming from a second player hiding somewhere in the wings. |
| She creates colors, some shimmering, some harsh, and encompasses every inch of the guitar's dynamic range. That musical depth and creativity lives in every corner of her playing. |
| Yang Xue-Fei approached the Bach "Chaconne" (BWV 1004) with a relaxed, free tempo. She infused enough give and take to make the piece her own, not imposing her will on it so much as explaining it to the audience by the way she played it. |
| The guitarist treated four meditative movements from Carlo Domeniconi's seven-movement "I Ching" as vignettes. She gave each one, pieces with titles like "Tranquility" and "Dissolving," a distinct character. |
| She gave a touching, engrossing performance of Britten's "backwards" theme and variations on Dowland's "Come Heavy Sleep." Britten placed the theme at the end of the piece instead of the beginning. Yang Xue-Fei handled the reversal so deftly that when she finally played the theme, it felt like a visit with an old friend. |
| Playing Francisco Tarrega's take on the famous "Carnival of Venice" theme and variations, Yang Xue-Fei brought some delightful bravura to the stage, tossing off wild pyrotechnics playfully and creating a huge palette of sounds and effects. She gave musical meaning to every note of the piece. |
| She gave a fiery reading of Tedesco's aptly named "Capriccio Diabolico (Homage to Paganini)" and made fascinating, elegant music with "Asturias" from Albeniz's "Suite Espanola" and Turina's "Sonata, Op. 6." |
| Yang Xue-Fei answered standing ovations with two encores, a tango and a lovely Chinese piece. |
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| From the April 12, 2006 editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel |
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