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Who or what inspired you to pursue a career in music and who or what have been the most important influences on your musical life and career?

When I was 7 years old, my parents told me that I was enrolled in a guitar group at my school.  Back then I didn’t even know what a guitar was, or that you could have a career as a guitarist !  At around 10 years of age, I took part in some guitar events in China where I saw some professional foreign guitarists play concerts and I was told I had the ability to do the same as them.

This is what first put the idea of pursuing a career in music into my head, without really knowing what it entailed.  My youthful enthusiasm took me to the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, against the wishes of my family, where I became the very first guitar student in the whole country.  During my ten years there I constantly felt that my instrument was under appreciated and underestimated.  This enhanced my own determination to have a musical career and show everyone what the guitar can do.  I was also so inspired by the great musical environment at the conservatory, and this too strengthened my resolve to become a musician.

What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?

There have been many challenges on my musical journey.  When I started playing in China, no one in China had taken this path before, so there were no local role models.  The country had no classical guitar tradition.  Looking back, I had to battle against the odds to make my own path. Over the years this took me to the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, and later abroad to study at the Royal Academy of Music in London.  It’s not easy for an Eastern person to come to the West and make a career with no familiarity with the environment here.  Especially so when that career is playing a niche Western instrument. Therefore, I am extremely grateful for all the support I have received to come this far.

Which performances/recordings are you most proud of

My recordings are like my children. I like them all, but I am particularly proud of two,  Bach Concertos and Sketches of China. These both contain new repertoire for guitar, so I put a great deal of effort and time to make these happen.  Not only the recording, but sourcing the repertoire, and making the guitar arrangements.

There are also many concerts that I am proud of, but my most recent is actually a highlight. It was called ‘Once Upon a Time in Brazil’ and I played for two consecutive nights at the NCPA in Beijing.  The concert presents a wide selection of Brazilian music from classical to popular style. The program highlighted the central role that guitar has in all this music .  I pushed my own boundaries as a classically trained player.  I felt a revelation performing new musical styles in collaboration with different combinations of chamber musicians.  For example, we had one set with guitar, percussion, and double bass, rather like a jazz trio which worked really well.  The enthusiastic response from the audience on both nights gave me great encouragement and was a welcome reward for the project.

Which particular works/composers do you think you perform best?

I feel particularly at home with lyrical, romantic works.  I consider lyricism as one of my hallmarks.  I am always singing in my head as I play.  Several string players have told me that I phrase as if I have a bow in my hand. That’s a complement I really like and can associate with.

What do you do off stage that provides inspiration on stage?

Travel!  I like travelling to see how people live in different places around the world, and to learn about their culture.  That’s a great source of inspiration when interpreting music from these cultures.  It’s not only an inspiration on stage, but it opens my mind and helps me understand myself and my own cultural background in a broader and deeper way and understand other people more.

How do you make your repertoire choices from season to season?

It’s based on a combination of factors, my own personal tastes and desires, the concert schedule and promoter’s requests, and my recording plans. In general, I try to balance a program to have something for everyone. I also try to feature something familiar and something new, whilst at the same time broadening my own repertoire.

Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in and why?

I think my overall favourite is Wigmore Hall in London. It has a perfect acoustic for guitar.

What do you feel needs to be done to grow classical music’s audiences?

I think a few factors need to be addressed.  I don’t know if classical music is losing audiences as such, but nowadays people have more choices about how to use their time, so we must compete for their attention.  We need to make the music relevant to them. I also feel there are still elements of elitism in classical music, that make many feel excluded from the circle.  Musical education plays a huge role in this.  For example, in China a vast number of children are learning instruments, and their parents will take them to hear concerts.

What is your most memorable concert experience?

I have many!  Two come to mind.  My first is meeting the composer Rodrigo who came to my Spanish debut concert in Madrid when I was 14!  More recently it was amazing to play on Bastille Day sitting under the Eiffel Tower with the French National Orchestra, performing to a huge live audience on the Champ de Mars, and an even bigger audience via the broadcast on French national television.

As a musician, what is your definition of success?

I think I would consider myself as a success if I could be recognised and remembered for my professional legacy.

What advice would you give to young/aspiring musicians?

There are easier ways to make a living.  It’s often a tough, competitive, and unforgiving profession, even for those who truly have talent.  It’s very easy to be distracted or disillusioned, so I think it’s useful to keep reminding yourself why you are following this path, and never lose the love and enjoyment of the music.

What’s the one thing in the music industry we’re not talking about which you think we should be?

Finding the right business model that allows promoters to balance artistic innovation versus commercial risk.  In economically hard times, there is great pressure on promoters to take commercially safe options in choices of artists, repertoire, and programs.  However, in the long run this is a danger to the health of innovation in the arts. Exciting things happen at the edge of the comfort zone. I hope the industry will regain sufficient financial independence to strike a good balance.

What’s next?

Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, the first single from my upcoming digital album X-Culture (released 19th May 2023), was released on Friday 7th April from  It was rather poignant to learn today that the composer of the piece, Ryuichi Sakamoto died earlier this month. I knew he was unwell at the time I was recording his piece; I was actually thinking of his feelings at that time. Reading about his suffering gave me a sense of nostalgia as I recorded the piece.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Good health, great loving relationship, and being able to do what I enjoy doing.

What is your most treasured possession?

My guitars.

Xuefei Yang performs in the Image China concert at London’s Cadogan Hall on Thursday 13th April. The programme features celebrated and ground-breaking works by acclaimed Chinese composers Chen Qigang, Tan Dun, Wang Xilin, Zhou Tian, and Fu Renchang alongside Western composers Edward Elgar and John Brunning.

More info/tickets

Xuefei Yang is acclaimed as one of the world’s finest classical guitarists. Hailed as a musical pioneer – her fascinating journey began after the Cultural Revolution, a period where Western musical instruments & music were banned. Xuefei was the first-ever guitarist in China to enter a music school, & became the first internationally recognised Chinese guitarist on the world stage. Her first public appearance was at the age of ten and received such acclaim that the Spanish Ambassador in China presented her with a concert guitar. Her debut in Madrid at the age of 14 was attended by the composer Joaquín Rodrigo and, when John Williams heard her play, he gave two of his own instruments to Beijing’s Central Conservatoire especially for her and other advanced students.

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The important thing is not to stop questioning… Never lose holy curiosity – Albert Einstein

One of the tenets of my own musical study, my writing and my life in general is to “stay curious”. I’ve always been curious and from a young age, I wanted to know stuff – from dinosaurs to Egyptology, Old English to the piano music of Schubert, or setting up my own website/blog and learning basic computer coding. Today, the internet is a remarkable resource for the curious-minded and my usual habit, if I want to find out something, is to look it up on Google or YouTube.

Curiosity is essential for the musician. Not only does it drive exploration, keeps practice interesting, improves problem-solving skills and creativity, and helps to maintain self-motivation, it also fosters creativity, thus encouraging one to explore further – new repertoire, techniques and more to improve one’s skills and expand one’s musical horizons.

Mindless, uncurious practising is boring. It’s often simply “going through the motions”, without thinking creatively about what you are doing at the piano. Look closely at the score, ask it questions – why has the composer used that harmony/ combination of notes/specific articulation? – and seek your own answers (and remember that there isn’t necessarily a single or straightforward answer, nor that there is a “right answer” or “right way” of doing things – adopting this mindset is liberating in itself, and breeds even more curiosity and creativity).

The curious pianist approaches each practice session with an open mind – “what can I do today that’s different/better?“.  Curiosity helps to keep practice engaging and interesting (because, let’s be honest, practicing can be tedious, especially if you’ve been working on the same piece or pieces for long periods of time, for example, when preparing for an exam or diploma performance). By approaching practice with a sense of curiosity, you can make the process more enjoyable and satisfying – and, importantly, more motivating.

Photo by Anastasia Kolchina on Pexels.com

Curiosity improves problem-solving skills too. When you encounter a difficult passage in a piece or a technical problem in your playing, curiosity can help you to find creative solutions. It encourages you to think outside the box and come up with new ways to approach a problem.

A good teacher will encourage curiosity in their students and give them the tools to be curious in their own practicing and musical study (and curiosity is related to independent learning and self-teaching which will be covered in a separate post).  Curious students tend to be more eager to learn – and to learn more – motivated and self-starting.

Away from the practice room, be curious about your encounters with other music. Go to concerts, experience music with which you may or may not be familiar. Listen with an open mind and find inspiration from others’ music-making.

Curiosity allows us all, at whatever level we play, whether amateur or professional, to push ourselves to improve and expand our skills, which is essential to becoming a better musician.

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Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943) is surely one of the greatest – if not the greatest – composers for the piano in the history of the instrument.

It probably helped that Rachmaninov was an extraordinarily talented pianist himself and the instrument dominated his creative thinking from the outset. He began playing the piano at a young age and by his early teens he was already performing in public. He went on to study at the Moscow Conservatory, where he received a rigorous musical education that included extensive training in piano performance. This background gave him a deep understanding of the instrument, both technically and artistically, which is clearly reflected in his piano music.

As a master of the piano, who fully understood its capabilities, one of the hallmarks of Rachmaninov’s piano music is its virtuosity. His music is technically demanding and requires exceptional skill and dexterity to perform. But he was also careful to ensure that his virtuosity always served the music, rather than being an end in itself, and his works for piano – from the miniatures and salon pieces to the great piano concertos – are not just impressive displays of technical prowess, but also deeply expressive and emotionally evocative, full of brooding passion that remained a powerful force in his music throughout his compositional life. His music is often intimate and personal. He wrote many of his pieces as a way of processing his own emotions and life experiences. His pieces are full of passion, nostalgia, and a sense of yearning; they plumb the depths and scale the heights of emotion, and they speak of and to the human experience in a way that is both universal and also highly intimate.

Another important aspect of Rachmaninov’s music is his use of harmony. Reacting against the trend towards modernism and the avant-garde, which dominated classical music at the turn of the 20th century, Rachmaninov remained true to the late Romantic style of which he was a master. His music is replete with lush harmonies and emotional expressiveness, and he used a wide range of complex chords and sweeping arpeggios to create a sense of richness, vivid colours, depth and emotional power.

He also had a wonderful gift for melody, and his piano pieces are full of beautiful, memorable themes which are often developed over the course of the piece, becoming more complex and intricate as the music unfolds to create a sense of narrative and emotional progression.

For the advanced amateur, and even the professional, his music can be daunting. Many pianists believe they cannot play Rachmaninov’s music because of the physical demands it places on the player – a misconception to which I subscribed for a long time, until I decided to include two of the Op. 33 Etudes-Tableaux in one of my performance diploma programmes.

I believed my hands were too small for Rachmaninov, that I didn’t have a big enough hand stretch (a ninth, at a stretch; Rachmaninov could famously stretch an octave plus 4) or the necessary power and stamina to manage the big, hand-filling chords or the tempi. So what did I do? I selected a piece (op. 33, No. 7) which included both of these challenges – and I rose to them, with the help of my then teacher who showed me that one needs neither hands like shovels nor a specially-adapted piano keyboard to play this magnificent music.

Yes, technique is crucial in mastering Rachmaninov’s music, but perhaps the harder aspect is interpretation – and for that one can hear the master himself playing his own music. Recordings of Rachmaninov playing Rachmaninov offer some remarkable insights into his approach to tempo, phrasing, dynamics, interpretation, a gift for counterpoint, and so much more. There is much expressive freedom in his performances coupled with a profound emotionality (as opposed to sentimentality), rendered with great clarity and drama. He offers us the best interpretation possible of his own music. It is therefore surprising to learn that Rachmaninov declared, “I can’t play my own compositions.”

His most famous works for piano are surely the second and third piano concertos, the Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini, and the Preludes in C-sharp minor and G minor. But his oeuvre for piano is extensive and varied – the opp. 23 and 32 Preludes, two sets of Études-Tableaux (opp. 33 and 39), transcriptions, salon pieces like the Morceaux de fantaisie and Moments musicaux, the Symphonic Dances, works for four and six hands piano, variations (on themes by Chopin and Corelli), two piano sonatas, and many other miniatures and shorter works.

Which pianists should we turn to for inspiration in this remarkable repertoire? Of today’s pianists, Evgeny Kissin is, for me, one of the finest Rachmaninov players – an opinion which was fully reconfirmed when I heard Kissin in concert at the Barbican in March; the second half was all Rachmaninov (to mark the composer’s 150th anniversary). Kissin’s technical virtuosity and musical understanding allow him to reveal the full range of Rachmaninov’s music, from hauntingly beautiful, intimate melodies to thunderous climaxes.

This Etude-Tableaux, from the Op. 39 set, is one of my favourites:

When preparing for my diploma, John Lill’s recording of the Etudes-Tableaux was one to which I returned many times, but I also very much like Nikolai Lugansky in this repertoire. His performances of Rachmaninov’s music in general are marked by a rare combination of technical mastery, emotional breadth, and interpretive insight which showcase the full range of the composer’s vision. Steven Osborne is another pianist whose recording of the Etudes-Tableaux I much admire for its clarity, multi-hued dynamic palette and beautiful quality of sound, coupled with a thrilling “in the moment” spontaneity.

Pianists from an earlier era must surely include Vladimir Horowitz, who was greatly admired by the composer himself, and who helped bring the third piano concerto to prominence in the USA. His recordings of the Prelude in C-sharp minor and the Vocalise in particular are also widely admired for their emotional intensity and technical brilliance.

And no collection of favourite Rachmaninov recordings should be without Sviatoslav Richter. Renowned for his technical command and expressive power, and his ability to create a sense of “controlled risk”, Richter’s performances of Rachmaninov’s music are considered some of the finest ever recorded.

Other pianists to seek out in this repertoire include Emil Gilels, Cyril Smith, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Yefim Bronfman, Byron Janis, Martha Argerich, Arcadi Volodos, Daniil Trifonov, Yuja Wang, Peter Donohoe, Khatia Buniatishvili, Valentina Lisitsa….. Each of these pianists brings their own distinct interpretive style to Rachmaninov’s music, resulting in memorable performances that are technically fluent and emotionally rich.

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Are there pieces that are simply too challenging for non-professionals to even attempt?

Guest post by Caroline Wright

There are those who believe that, yes, there are indeed pieces that amateurs should leave well alone. Hugely technically challenging pieces – of which there are many in the piano repertoire –  should be respected by those who cannot hope to do them justice. We should all be aware of our limits, and leave the tough stuff to those who can handle it!

I think most musicians probably disagree with this position. Personally I don’t think any repertoire should be off-limits, to anyone. We all need to be aware of our level and personal limitations, but that’s true of professionals and amateurs alike. Many individuals have physical limitations that mean they will never be able to play certain pieces, but that has no effect on their ability to play other repertoire – for example, having small hands is a curse for pianists who wish to play Brahms, Rachmaninoff and Ravel, but may actually bean asset in Bach, Scarlatti and Mozart. Finding and expressing the beauty of a piece of music can be both a challenge and a joy for anyone, irrespective of it’s technical demands.

I cannot think of a better way of respecting the music of great composers than by dedicating many hours to playing and memorising it. Listening to recordings and live concerts given by great performers is wonderful too, of course, but undoubtedly a more passive way to experience music than playing it and internalising it yourself. Learning the music, to such a level that you can see the score in the mind’s eye and listen along without the need for external sound, is surely a greater mark of respect than playing it note-perfect in every performance?

In reality, the boundary between amateurs and professional musicians is blurred. Many amateurs are highly skilled, qualified musicians, and many professionals rarely perform in public. At the end of the day, any musician (particularly soloists!) must decide what repertoire they are happy to play in concert in front of strangers, versus that which they prefer to play for their own enjoyment, in the safety of their own home. And here, I believe, is where the most stark difference occurs between amateurs – literally ‘lovers’ of music – and professional performers who must make a living from music. Those of us who have the (dubious!) ‘luxury’ of earning a living outside of performing can afford never to play to a fee-paying public, if we so desire. We may play to friends and family, students and colleagues, or simply to ourselves, without having to conquer performance anxiety and the very real possibility of making fools of ourselves on stage. This choice should certainly not act as a barrier to playing particular repertoire. Professional performers, on the other hand, must make a living from performing and accept that anything less than a polished performance is unlikely to help their career progression or recording sales.

As an amateur pianist, there is no doubt that there are many pieces that I will never be able to play well enough even for my own satisfaction (and wouldn’t dare inflict on anyone else!), and others that I believe I play well enough both for myself and others to enjoy. There’s a balance that I find hard to strike between painstakingly learning more challenging repertoire and playing technically easier repertoire to a higher musical level. The guidance of a teacher to steer any unwary students towards repertoire that they will find challenging yet satisfying is crucial. But no music should be off-limits and, regardless of one’s ability, it is a privilege to be able to study some of the greatest works that have ever been created by the human mind.

Caroline Wright is a musician (MMus, LTCL) and scientist (MSci, PhD). Her compositions have a diverse range of influences, from classical and contemporary to blues and jazz, film and folk, dance and electronica.