Tengyue Zhang won the 2017 Guitar Foundation of America (GFA) International Concert Artist Competition, one of the world’s most prestigious events. His debut recital illustrates the moods, colors and techniques of the concert classical guitar from baroque transcriptions to masters of the twentieth-century genre such as Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Tansman, and Brouwer. Despite being from very different backgrounds and time periods, several of the pieces share intriguing relationships in their use of variation form or thematic motifs and harmonic progressions. Aside from the GFA, Tengyue Zhang has also won first prizes at other well-known competitions- Austria’s Forum Gitarre Wien International Youth Competition, the Changsha International Guitar Competition, the 2017 Schadt String Competition, and the 2017 Alexander Frauchi International Competition in Moscow.
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REVIEW:
One is struck by the extraordinary level of comfort and ease that his total mastery of his program communicates. He manages to imbue every single work with tremendous personality, power, and nuance.
