An exciting career ahead
MANUS CAREY listens to Chinese pianist Wu Qian
Throughout her varied programme at the Purcell room on 19 May 2004, twenty-year-old London-based
Chinese pianist Wu Qian demonstrated an impressive technical flair, an easy virtuosity and a warm sound
coupled with a wonderful sensitivity to phrasing. Wu Qian is still a student at the Royal Academy of
Music, having studied on a scholarship at the Menuhin school and earlier at her native Shanghai
Conservatoire of Music. Still only young, she has already racked up numerous experiences performing in
many leading venues both in London and abroad, and on the basis of her recent recital at the Purcell room
it is not hard to see why.
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Wu Qian
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The opening work, Bach's Partita in E minor (BWV 830), showed Wu Qian unafraid to interpret Bach using
the full resources of the modern grand piano. Not to everyone's taste, this was full-bodied, muscular Bach
with a romantic and dramatic edge, which in another pianist's hands might have become overblown. Her
continuously beautiful and natural sense of phrasing shone particularly in the faster Courante,
Gavotte and Gigue where rhythmic impetus made them sparkle and dance.
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Copyright © 5 June 2004
Manus Carey, London UK
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