“Amy Yang is an extraordinarily beautiful and sensitive young pianist. Hearing her play one cannot help loving and admiring her and her music making infinitely. Few pianists her age can hold an audience to that extent.”
--Claude Frank, internationally renowned Pianist and Teacher

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"A magnificent artist and poet: everything she touches turns to gold--a Midas touch for tone and music." --Harris Goldsmith of The New York Concert Review

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"Cynthia Raim and Amy Jiaqi Yang gave a seamless, hypnotic account of the Schumann-Debussy..." - Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise

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A passionate, intimate gathering in Marlboro, Vt.

By David Weininger, Globe Correspondent | August 10, 2010

"Cynthia Raim and Amy Jiaqi Yang were scrupulous in the care they gave to each motif, as it was passed gently back and forth between them."

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By David Patrick Stearns, Inquirer Classical Music Critic | January 7, 2010

"...Yet what an experience Brahms' two viola sonatas were at yesterday's Morning Musicales concert, when emerging artists Teng Li (viola) and Amy Jiaqi Yang (piano) collaborated on an hour-long recital that seemed to collude with the gray winter's morning for maximum effect... [The Sonatas'] lyricism was given its full due in these performances... Brahms the logician was equally apparent because the performers so clearly attended to the presence and purposes of nonmelodic details. Thus, codas arrived with ingenious inevitability.

The supposed gentility of the chamber music medium didn't inhibit Yang from having fortissimo outbursts; she's never one to gloss over a piece's less seemly truths. In the more spare piano writing, she never just accompanied, but meticulously fleshed out whatever idea unfolded from the viola, often with Mozartean grace. Violist Li was laboring with a cold, though Brahms' emotional range was easily within her grasp, particularly in the way that she scaled her sound to a near-violinistic whisper and found exactly the right weight for key phrases.

Though Morning Musicales has long dedicated itself to presenting emerging artists - for years in the Academy of Music ballroom, now at Curtis Institute's Field Concert Hall - these two musicians are still emerging on the career front but, artistically speaking, have fully arrived.

Read the full review here.

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Marlboro’s edge still sharp

By David Weininger, Globe Correspondent | August 12, 2009
MARLBORO, Vt. - A wave of nervous laughter rippled through the Marlboro Music Festival audience at Saturday night’s concert. Three instrumentalists had just walked on stage to play George Crumb’s “Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale),’’ a 1971 piece that not only requires amplification for the flute, cello, and piano, but asks for the stage to be bathed in aqua blue light and for the players to perform in masks. Marlboro is usually described as venerable and storied but rarely as cutting edge, and the odd setup induced a wary sense of “What are we in for now?’’ among many listeners.
Yet if the sights and sounds of the piece were strange, the excellent performance showed continuity with Marlboro’s spirit. From its beginnings, the 59-year-old festival has been devoted to the intensive study and restudy of the chamber repertoire, and one of its guiding principles is that each indication in a composer’s score is to be treated as sacrosanct. It was refreshing to see that idea applied as faithfully to Crumb as to Mozart and Dvorak. And though the eerie shadings of “Vox Balaenae’’ sound somewhat dated now, the commitment of the players - flutist Marina Piccinini, cellist Susan Babini, and pianist Amy Jiaqi Yang - made it a highly invigorating experience.

Read the full review here.

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Marlboro man

By Jeremy Eichler, Globe Staff | July 31, 2009
The elegant pianist Richard Goode maintains a busy schedule of touring and recording, but every summer he returns to the Marlboro Music Festival in the bucolic hills of southern Vermont. He’s co-artistic director of that revered cradle of American chamber music, a job he shares with the pianist Mitsuko Uchida. We recently spoke with Goode to hear how this 59th season is coming along.
Q. Marlboro of course does not announce its concert programs until a week before so that the musicians can choose when they’re ready to perform. What’s on the schedule for the upcoming third weekend? Will you be performing?
A. Actually I’m playing a piece of Schumann four-hands with a fine pianist named Amy Jiaqi Yang.

Read the full review here.

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Preliminary round ends with virtuosic displays

BY CHRIS SHULL SPECIAL TO THE STAR-TELEGRAM (May 30, 2009)

FORT WORTH – Each of Tuesday’s recitals at the Van Cliburn competition were played under a haze of excitement – with performers and audience perfectly aware that 12 semi-finalists would be announced at the end of the day.
It was tempting to prepare "fantasy lists" ahead of time. But to do so would discount several fine performances at Bass Hall throughout the day.
Amy J. Yang (25, USA/China) welcomed us back for the final day of the preliminaries with a wonderful program of Bach and Schumann. Bach’s French Overture in B minor promenaded from one engaging movement to the next, beginning with bright, sustained chords that transitioned into quick, creamy melodies chasing each other in imitation. Yang spiced the gracious melodies with fast turns and lightning connecting scales.
Throughout Schumann’s Davidsbundlertanze, Yang conveyed the exuberance and enthusiasm of youth. The pieces alternated between interior longings and exterior gaiety; her warm tone suggested both illusionary lightness and physical freedom. Even stormy moments reflected exhilaration.

Read the full review here.

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A cellist sublime in a group or solo

By Peter Dobrin
Inquirer Music Critic

Posted on Wed, Oct. 19, 2005

But it was the Franck that made a towering impression, surely in part because of a certain frisson between Baltacigil and his pianist, Amy Yang. In a transcription for cello and piano of the Sonata for Violin and Piano, Yang opened the second movement with the flash of a Rachmaninoff transcription. She made sense of complex passages by deftly highlighting one voice among many.

And in the last movement, both players elevated joy to the edge of rapture while still in control of a totally refined sound.