Pianist Xiayin Wang: "What one can do with music has no boundaries"
By Jason Crane, Island Packet - Special to the Guide (10/30/09)
The Chinese-born, America-based pianist Xiayin Wang is receiving rave reviews for her new CD of the work of Alexander Scriabin. She’ll be performing several of his pieces — along with work by Haydn, Debussy, Gershwin, Bach and Chopin — at 8 p.m. today at the Arts Center of Coastal Carolina on Hilton Head Island.
Wang said her early exposure to Scriabin came from a performance by one of the 20th century’s master pianists, Vladimir Horowitz.
“The first piano work I heard of Scriabin was the ‘Vers La Flamme’ performed by Vladimir Horowitz, and right then I fell in love with Scriabin’s music,” she said. “His music is full of colors, fire, mysticism, passion and a tremendous amount of emotions, and to me, those things are what I am looking for in music, in piano playing and performing.”
She acknowledged the challenges in playing Scriabin’s composition, particularly given her decision to play pieces from throughout his life: “As Scriabin’s style changed from his early to late stage, he went through dramatic developments of his piano writing in technique, texture, harmonies, and chromaticism. As his style grows from the early Chopin-like music into the middle stage of revolutionary harmonies and the late stage of mysticism with extreme chromaticism, his technical writing grows accordingly. His late writing, which includes lots of expansion of chords, texture and thick contrapuntal writing, gives a pianist plenty of opportunities to practice.”
Wang has been playing the piano since she was a child in kindergarten. “I used to stay after every music class trying to imitate what I had just heard the music teacher playing on the piano. The melodies would come out just right, but of course I’d use the wrong fingering, since I hadn’t really started professional piano lessons. As the teacher discovered my little after-class doodling around the piano, she suggested to my parents that they start piano lessons for me. That’s how my journey started as a pianist. Today I am still grateful to the teacher who discovered my little talent on the piano.”
Wang commented on a classical musician’s ability to put his or her own stamp on music that doesn’t contain improvisation. “What a pianist can do on the piano technically is tremendous, yet limited. But what one can do with music has no boundaries. To put one’s life experience into music is the most amazing and fun part for me as a pianist. Through my years of studying, I have learned it is absolutely essential to connect my life experience, and what I learn from it, into music.”
Asked whether it is difficult to make a living as a classical pianist, Wang said: “To do anything well is not that easy. To become good at something requires devotion and effort. It is necessary to do what it takes to climb up where you want to be. One should be willingly doing what one is determined to do. No one’s life is easy. But I have chosen this road, I will see it through.”