Yuanfan Yang (1997–): Piano Concerto No. 3 in Five Movements (2021) – Complete

02:41 1st movement
08:10 2nd movement
14:50 3rd movement
20:02 4th movement
25:09 5th movement

32:43 Announcement of the competition results
35:25 Announcement of Yuanfan's 1st Prize win

Yuanfan Yang (pianist & composer) performs his complete Piano Concerto No. 3 in Five Movements (2021) with the Novaya Rossiya State Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Fyodor Lednev, during the finals of the Rachmaninoff International Music Competition for Piano, Conducting and Composition, held at the Rachmaninov Concert Hall (Philharmonia-2) on 26 June 2022 at 19:00.

Yuanfan was awarded 1st Prize & Gold Medal in the Composition Category.

Yuanfan writes: I started writing this concerto in May 2020 as a project for the lockdown period during the pandemic and completed it a year later in May 2021. I had already written two officially numbered piano concertos in my life; the first one was written when I was 17, and the second when I was 22, the latter of which was written in a specific harmonic language to fulfil a requested criterion that it had to be particularly audience friendly.

But the third was conceived from a fit of inspiration, where I could be free to compose how I wanted. With relation to styles and features, the lockdown period allowed me to discover and get inspired by a great variety of music; I had over the past few years started to wonder how I was going to develop my ‘style’ in a way I wanted. I intended to write a piano concerto for the 21st century – with the aim of retaining the virtuoso concerto elements from the romantic era but blending them with more contemporary usages of harmony and structure, and hopefully through writing two previous concertos, I had built up some experience for this. I also explored taking consonant chords/harmonies/tonalities but used, combined and built upon them in an unusual personal way, which hopefully gives the concerto a sense of accessibility and stability, as I was not so interested in writing something fully atonal or experimental.

This concerto spans five contrasting movements, in a slow, fast, fast, fast, slow structure. I felt five movements would provide ample opportunity to showcase the contrasts of mood and temperament. Each movement feels like a different piece, and yet hopefully all five movements tie up the concerto together cohesively, and not just because each movement starts on the note ‘G’! Each movement’s melodic and harmonic material is unique to themselves, except the first and final movements which share the same melodic material.

The first movement 02:41 serves mainly as a scene-setter and introduces the audience to the concerto in a gradual way, starting from somewhere distant and building to a kind of climax, before fading again. The second movement 08:10 is somewhat like a disfigured scherzo + trio, although it feels much more substantial than that. The mood is often unsettling, intimidating, biting and forboding, contrasting the trio section, which starts off calmer before becoming more and more recitative-like, before the mood of the scherzo returns, even more fiery, tempestuous and relentless than the first time round. The third movement 14:50 starts quite rhapsodically, before suddenly moving into a fanfare-like section doubled on piano and horns; all of which surrounds a dream-like meditative section, built upon the piano’s expressive and melodic use of repeated notes. The fourth movement 20:02 is a moto perpetuo; a relentless non-stop toccata from start to finish, initially starting with the wind before getting interrupted and taken over by the piano which continues the rollercoaster ride determinedly onwards, eventually arriving at a huge climax near the end, before fading cheekily. The fifth and final movement 25:09 is almost like a chorale and feels like a culmination of the eventualities from previous movements – it is grand, luminous in stature, and moves slowly, solemnly with nobility and pride. This movement is closest out of all to feeling like a ‘soundscape’ and takes its time to build to these gigantic all-encompassing climaxes, so much so that as the movement progresses, the piano is eventually engulfed and consumed by the orchestra (who may be ‘jealous’ that the piano has been at the centre of the piece for so long). It is ironic that by the very end, the piano gets softer whilst the orchestra gets louder, and the piano ends up being completely engulfed by the orchestra.