Internationally renowned pianist Angela Cheng joins Vetta Chamber Music players for a musical conversation with old friends
A program of Schubert and Mozart masterpieces will see her join hands with her husband, pianist Alvin Chow, and reunite with an old Edmonton Youth Orchestra colleague
Angela Cheng.
Vetta Chamber Music presents Schubertiade with Angela Cheng on April 26 at 2 pm at West Point Grey United Church; April 27 at 7:30 pm at West Vancouver United Church; April 28 at 2 pm at Pyatt Hall; and April 29 at 2:30 pm at ArtSpring on Salt Spring Island
ACCLAIMED EDMONTON-BASED pianist Angela Cheng’s love of music goes back to her early childhood in Hong Kong. Her grandfather had spent some time in San Francisco, where he discovered classical music. He brought that passion back to Guangzhou province in China, and opened a violin factory; all of his nine children and grandchildren had to play piano or violin. Cheng was assigned the piano, first studying with her mother and then with two aunts, before emigrating to Alberta when she was 11. She found excellent piano instructors in her new home city, and the piano played an enormous role in her formative years.
“The move helped me bond with music,” Cheng recalls, on the line from her Edmonton home. “I was a fairly good student in school in Hong Kong, then coming and entering in seventh grade [in Edmonton] I was doing well in math but nothing else. I didn’t have any friends, I couldn’t communicate, so I bonded with music.”
Cheng went on to study at Indiana University and the Juilliard School, and she has performed as a guest with major orchestras across the world—including virtually all of Canada’s. She also has a storied career as an international touring recitalist, soloist, and chamber musician.
Her next appearance, with Vancouver’s Vetta Chamber Music, features three works: Franz Schubert’s Fantasia in F minor, D.940 (Op. posth. 103) and Piano Quintet in A major (“Trout”), and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Quartet in E flat major.
The Schubert pieces are among the composer’s very best, according to Cheng. “Fantasia for four hands is so touching, so beautiful for both the performers and the listeners,” says Cheng, who is on the artist faculty of Ohio’s Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and who will perform the piece with her husband, Alvin Chow. “They really can feel all the sweetness, all the sadness that Schubert encountered in his life. There’s a juxtaposition of beauty and, not necessarily great despair, but we can hear the tenderness, the disappointments in his life that he must have faced….You can hear a bit of Mozart influence and Beethoven influence, of course, but then Schubert comes up with something uniquely his.”
Piano Quintet in A major (“Trout”) is unique in that it is not written for the usual two violins, viola, and cello, but rather for violin, viola, cello, and double bass.
“To my knowledge, this is the only piece written for this formation, at least around Schubert’s time for sure; it had never been done before,” Cheng says. “It’s based on a song for piano and voice. It’s incredibly positive, uplifting, beautiful music that is one of the great masterpieces, not just of Schubert’s, but of all people.”
Angela Cheng.
Cheng describes Mozart’s Piano Quartet in E flat major as very warm, charming, and beautiful. She says that performing and practising give her great joy, and that playing in a chamber music setting is like having a conversation.
“Being a pianist, we don’t have our instrument with us; every time you go to a concert you are faced with a new instrument,” Cheng says. “That is a huge challenge, because you have to somehow understand how it works mechanically—how the sound is, how it balances. Playing with string players is very different from playing with singers. or playing with orchestra, or playing by yourself. You have to make sure people can hear the conversation; that it’s not the piano yelling and the strings kind of whispering, so balancing properly is an issue because our instrument is generally very big.
“That’s also part of the fun and the pleasure,” she adds. “You have to learn to adjust and give and take. It’s all about life, and it’s never straightforward.” The conversation at this forthcoming concert is one between good friends; Cheng has known Vetta Chamber Music artistic director Joan Blackman for several decades. They met as teenagers.
“I remember clearly going on tour with the Edmonton Youth Orchestra to L.A. with Angela as soloist in the early 1980s,” Blackman tells Stir. “She played Rachmaninoff's Paganini Variations. Even back then she was so sure of herself and made everyone around her feel good. The music was difficult for us all, and she made it seem so easy.
“She is one of the most human and approachable soloists I know,” Blackman adds. “Not many pianists of her calibre know how to collaborate with strings. Anytime I have heard her play, she is so focussed. Sometimes she even sings a little under her breath, which only the musicians nearby hear, but it speaks to the depth of her connection with the music and her commitment to finding the line.”
Blackman feels the concert is a perfect fit for Cheng and the Vetta chamber players.
“The classical greats are really our raison d'être, why we took up classical music in the first place,” Blackman says. "I know our audience will take delight in this program as well.” 
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