Ying Wang, cellist for the Beijing Chamber Ensemble

         
Beijing Chamber Ensemble Haunts HSU

 An All-Star lineup of musicians from China brings two haunting works to HSU when the Beijing Chamber Ensemble performs pieces by Beethoven and Brahms at Fulkerson Recital Hall on Tuesday April 9. 

 The Ensemble is led by the internationally renowned violinist Frank Ge-Fang Yang, former first violinist with San Francisco’s Alexander Quartet. 

 The Ensemble also includes Ying Wang, a prize-winning cellist who studied with many prominent cellists including Yo-Yo Ma.  A winner of the National Solo Viola Competition in China, Yue Qi was invited by the U.S Embassy in Beijing to perform for ambassadors from 30 countries. Pianist Fang Zhang, an award-winner in teaching as well as performing, appeared at HSU as a solo performer in 2011.

 All four performers are current faculty members with the prestigious School of the Arts at Remnin University in Beijing, China.

 At HSU they will play Beethoven’s Piano Trio in D, one of the best-known works of its kind. Called the “Ghost” trio, it may have been inspired by Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Scholar Lewis Lockwood wrote that this work "raises the genre to a level from which the later piano trio literature could move forward."

 The other work on the program is the Piano Quartet in C minor by Johannes Brahms, which incorporates music he composed at 23 years old with the final version he wrote 20 years later.  Sometimes called the "Werther Quartet" for Brahms' reference to Goethe's novel of unrequited love, The Sorrows of Young Werther, its effect according to one commentator is of a "dark, troubled urgency...that stays to haunt the memory."

 The Beijing Chamber Ensemble performs in a Guest Artists Concert on Tuesday April 9 at 8 p.m. in the Fulkerson Recital Hall on the HSU campus in Arcata. Tickets: $8/$3 from HSU Box Office (826-3928) or at the door. Produced by HSU Music Department.

Media: Humboldt State Now, Arcata Eye, Tri-City Weekly, North Coast Journal.