Program:
Ludwig van Beethoven: Sonata for Violin and Piano
No.3 in E-Flat Major, Op.12 No.3
Alberto Ginastera: Danzas Argentinas (Piano Solo)
Joan Tower: Second String Force (Violin Solo)
Johannes Brahms: Sonata for Violin and Piano No.2 in A major, Op. 100
Please join us for a very special afternoon program of classical piano and violin with Yi-Fang Wu and Dian Zhang. Yi-Fang has performed at the Eastern Music Festival, The Quartet Program, Miami Music Festival, and International Music Festival and Workshop in Germany. Dian Zhang joined the first violin section of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra in the Fall of 2017. Prior to his appointment with the Opera, Dian served as concertmaster of the Shepherd School Symphony, Chamber and Opera orchestras. As a chamber musician, Dian has appeared with both the Context and Syzygy music series in Houston and has also performed in Baltimore, New York as well as in Canada, Brazil, Spain, Austria and the UK.
Dian Zhang and Yi-Fang Wu at the Maybeck
Sunday, May 19, 2019. Doors 2:30pm, Concert 3:00pm
This concert is FREE.
Born in China, Dian Zhang moved to Southern California at a young age where he spent his formative years. He received his Bachelors and Master's degrees at the Peabody Institute where he studied with Victor Danchenko and is currently working toward completing a DMA at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University where he studied with Cho-Liang Lin for the past three years.
Dian Zhang joined the first violin section of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra in the Fall of 2017. Prior to his appointment with the Opera, Dian served as concertmaster of the Shepherd School Symphony, Chamber and Opera orchestras. As a chamber musician, Dian has appeared with both the Context and Syzygy music series in Houston and has also performed in Baltimore, New York as well as in Canada, Brazil, Spain, Austria and the UK. Dian also has attended various music festivals both in the US and internationally, including the Four Seasons Music Festival, the Yellow Barn Festival, the Britten-Pears Music Festival, the Chamber Music Residency at the Banff Centre and the Norfolk Music Festival. He has performed and collaborated with some of the great musicians of our time, including Cho-Liang Lin, Ani Kavafian, Donald Weilerstein, Robert McDonald, Michael Kannen and Colin Carr.
Community engagement events are deeply important to Dian; he has participated in events such as the lunchtime concerts at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center in Baltimore, a lecture recital at the Baltimore School for the Arts, and runout concerts at the Methodist Hospital in the Texas Medical Center. For two years at Rice University, as the Mary Hobson Teaching Fellow Dian enjoyed teaching courses in music fundamentals and music theory for non-music majors. He is currently working on a doctoral document focusing on the two violin sonatas by Béla Bartók.
Yi-Fang Wu’s love affair with music took over her existence after she had already graduated from National Tsing-Hua University in Taiwan where she majored in English Literature. She arrived at the Cleveland Institute of Music and earned a Master’s Degree in Piano Performance studying with Paul Schenly and Daniel Shapiro. CIM was the very first music school in her life, and there she quickly absorbed everything else at a dizzying pace during the two-year program. Her life transformed even further after discovering that her heart not only belonged to solo performance, but also in musical interactions with others. She immediately joined the Collaborative Piano program to formally train with Anita Pontremoli at CIM. It was the period during which Yi-Fang developed a love of string repertoire, and has since then collaborated with many wonderful chamber musicians while also being a chamber coach/staff pianist of San Francisco Conservatory’s Pre-College division.
The four years she spent immersed in English literature have enriched Yi-Fang’s expressive ideals. In the wordless language of music, she communicates the imagination and beauty of her beloved prose and poetry. Of her many favorites, Yi-Fang would love to share a poem: “Adonais: An Elegy on the death of John Keats” by Bysshe Shelley.
“ The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-colour'd glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.—Die,
If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!
Follow where all is fled!—Rome's azure sky,
Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak. “
Yi-Fang has performed at the Eastern Music Festival, The Quartet Program, Miami Music Festival, and International Music Festival and Workshop in Germany.