Sinn Yang - Debut (2009)

Violinist Sinn Yang is young, German, winner of multiple prizes within Germany, and has been a soloist since the age of 13. There is no denying she plays well and deserves as much as anyone the chance to make her debut recording. But Oehms Classics, through indifferent sound and a bad choice of literature, has managed to botch the job, or at least nearly so. Many violinists would love to have the strength and power of tonal projection that Yang has, and in the Bartók and Jörg Widmann works -- once the latter becomes audible -- Yang nobly acquits herself through her intensity and will; she will make for a great new music violinist and is at her best in works that require drive, stamina, a fat tone, and rhythmic energy. These qualities are a good match to the Piazzolla Le Grand Tango, if you can get past the flawed engineering by which Yang's violin becomes inextricably entangled in this tango with the sound of Harald Oeler's accordion.
However, Yang needs to work on material that requires sensitivity and restraint, and the Debussy Violin Sonata in G minor -- placed at the front of the disc -- is definitely not her strong suit, although Marco Grisanti's impatient, heavy piano accompaniment doesn't help matters. Debussy's carefully mediated, continuously evolving tissue of music is constantly broken by goopy rubato and countless little stops and fermatas that give it a lunging quality; the slow, melodic passage in the Finale almost comes off like a dancing bear. The inner Allegretto movement of the Schubert C major Fantaisie, is fine and is the first instance where we really hear what Yang is capable of, though that doesn't come until after 20 minutes of listening. The outer movements, however, are not a good showing; the Andantino starts with an almost silent movie kind of seriousness, and overall the performers don't really seem to get what the Schubert is about.
Oehms', or rather the Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg's, sound is quiet and undynamic in the extreme. If there is something going on in the first minute or so in Jörg Widmann's Étude V for violin solo, you can't hear it, just a long silence that makes you wonder where the heck the music went. A pity, as in the end this is a really good piece, and unusually so as a commission intended for a young artist. With any luck, Yang will try again with music better suited to her talents, an accompanist willing to yield to her, and recording engineers a little more dedicated to the art of delivering good listening. As it is, Oehms Classics' Sinn Yang: Debut is only half of a good album, and that half isn't very well recorded.