Xuefei Yang

This release is one of three new recordings issued in 2013 by EMI & Virgin Classics in honour of Britten's 100th birthday. Ian Bostridge, the internationally acclaimed tenor whose "attention to the text always matches Britten's own scrupulous word-setting", has recorded this album of songs by Benjamin Britten accompanied by Antonio Pappano. Featured are works he has never before recorded: 'Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo', 'Hölderlin Fragments', 'Songs From the Chinese', 'Winter Words' and Four English Songs from the last cycle 'Who are These Children?'.

The Beijing-born guitarist Xuefei Yang has recorded her first album of baroque music, an all-Bach programme anchored by three concertos newly arranged for guitar and string quartet. Bach Concertos is an exciting, innovative album in which she has transcribed for the guitar some of Bach’s familiar violin concertos and other works, hoping to establish these new arrangements as noteworthy repertoire for the guitar and to expand the concerto repertoire for that instrument. Xuefei complements the concertante repertoire with solo guitar arrangements of the Violin Sonata No. 1 BWV 1001, the Prelude in C Major from the Well-Tempered Clavier BWV 846 and the Air on a G string from the Orchestral Suite in D major BWV 1068.

Xuefei, whose international career finds her on the prestigious stages of the Wigmore Hall, Southbank Centre, Royal Albert Hall, Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Philharmonie (Berlin), Konzerthaus (Vienna) and Lincoln Center (New York), as well as to other major concert halls of Europe, North America and Asia, hopes that the new concerto arrangements will become established additions to the repertoire for her instrument. “In the baroque concerto repertoire,” she says, we only really have Vivaldi Concertos, which are very light in nature. These Bach concertos would be a substantial and significant addition to the guitar repertoire and may create new opportunities to bring the instrument to a wider musical audience.”

Explaining the background to her latest recording, Xuefei said, “In Bach’s time, the modern guitar had not yet been invented but a close relative, the lute, was a popular instrument. Bach wrote quite a few works for solo lute and they have become core repertoire for guitarists. When I was playing the wonderful solo violin works by Bach, I wondered whether his concertos would work on the guitar too. So I found the scores and, to my delight, I found that they did!” The three concertos at the heart of the recording are those for Violin in A minor BWV 1041 and E Major BWV 1042 and for Harpsichord in D minor BWV 1052. Xuefei performs them with the Elias String Quartet.

EMI Classics releases Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez with Chinese guitarist Xuefei Wang. The album also includes the World Premiere recording of a new concerto by Stephen Goss, Albéniz Concerto, based on four of the composer’s most well-know works for guitar, the rarely recorded transcriptions for guitar of Albéniz’s suite España – 6 hojas de album and Rodrigo’s Invocación y danza, which Xuefei played for her international debut in Madrid when she was just 14 years old.

Supremely talented guitarist Xuefei Yang’s second disc for EMI Classics, 40 Degrees North, comprises guitar music from Spain and China.

Xuefei Yang was not only the first guitarist in China to enter music school and later to graduate from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing with a Bachelor of Arts degree, but she was also the first Chinese guitarist to study classical guitar in the West.

The disc is so titled because the capital cities of both countries lie near latitude 40 degrees north. As Yang says: “To me, this parallel has come to symbolize the connection I feel to the music of both countries.”

The Spanish repertoire includes original solo guitar compositions (such as Tárrega’s Carnival of Venice) as well as arrangements of pieces written for piano or two guitars (Albéniz’s Seguidillas). Many of these works appear in new arrangements by Yang herself.

Since China has no established guitar repertoire of its own, the Chinese pieces on this recording originate either from arrangements of traditional Chinese pieces (including two traditional Chinese folk songs arranged for guitar by Gerald Garcia), or new compositions based on Chinese themes (such as Welsh composer Stephen Goss’s Chinese Garden, written especially for Yang).

Also included on this recording is Butterfly Lovers, originally written as a violin concerto using Western orchestral instruments and arguably the best known piece of Chinese music.