To introduce his talents to the musical world, the young virtuoso David Fung has chosen a program that showcases his own extraordinary versatility, and the versatility of the piano itself as an expressive instrument for music across the centuries. Ou [+]To introduce his talents to the musical world, the young virtuoso David Fung has chosen a program that showcases his own extraordinary versatility, and the versatility of the piano itself as an expressive instrument for music across the centuries. Our chronology begins with the Baroque mastery of Johann Sebastian Bach, whose Well-Tempered Clavier lives on to astound us in the blend, in each of its 48 components, of masterful design and musical passion.
As the keyboard works of Bach loomed magnificently over the 18th century, so did the magnificent daring of Franz Liszt in the 19th. A flamboyant figure himself, Liszt proclaimed that no effect – pictorial or philosophical – was beyond the power of the piano to depict. The spectacular splash in his depiction of the Fountains at the Villa d’Este – one of a series of “travel” pieces based on his own “years of pilgrimage” through Italy’s high spots – bears him out. On the other hand, the massive, sweeping Sonata in B minor establishes Liszt equally as a master in a more abstract, Romantic musical style.
The power of the piano to trace the cascading beauties of water in motion was widely recognized by composers, few more successfully than Maurice Ravel, early in the 20th century, in his piece called, simply, The Play of Water. A daring pianist in his own right, Ravel also fashioned a piano-duet version of his colorful orchestral tone-poem La Valse; yet, moving one step beyond Ravel’s own daring, our own virtuoso David Fung has undertaken to perform all four hands’ worth of Ravel’s transcription with the mere two of his own. His program comes to a haunting, quiet close with more of Ravel, the solemn Pavane for a Dead Princess,– the measures of an ancient, ritual dance, given an enhanced new meaning in the hands of a more recent composer, and further dramatized in the hands of a gifted young master of the piano.
Alan Rich
Producer's Notes:
Yarlung Records recorded this American Debut Album for pianist David Fung in advance of his 2005 world concert tour. Following his celebrated concerts with the Sydney and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras, David won the International Klaviersommer Festival Competition in Germany in 2004. And after also capturing the festival’s People’s Choice Award, David qu
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