Reviews
Bryan Cheng is an outstanding young artist…we sought not just a performer with a solid technique, but also somebody who had something to say about the music and a real connection with the audience. Bryan impressed on every level.
About his performance of Richard Strauss’ “Don Quixote” with the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Daniel Raiskin, October 2023:
After the intermission, the symphonic poem “Don Quixote,” Op. 35, an iconic orchestral work by Richard Strauss inspired by the legendary chivalric novel by M. de Cervantes, was performed… the soloist was the twenty-six-year-old Canadian instrumentalist Bryan Cheng, a laureate of the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels in 2017 and currently a guest artist with many significant orchestras. He handled his part with remarkable elegance. It was a true pleasure to watch his long, melodically arched passages, especially in the fifth variation, ” The knight’s vigil,” and in the playful sixth variation, ” The Meeting with Dulcinea “.
Cheng’s mastery lies in his perfect tone, which was evident even in pianissimo passages, and his instrument’s captivating sound was present, even in collaboration with his fellow cellists, as the composer intended. The cello section, or a portion of it, is pulled into the phenomenal sound. Cheng makes the cello sing, and his expression is deep and suggestive. Like Don Quixote, he is bewildered and lost, but, along with the composer, he is kind to the story’s main character. In dialogue with individual orchestra members and the other soloist, violist Martin Ruman, he communicates with artistic passion and understanding.
About his performance of Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No.2 with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under Alpesh Chauhan at the Berliner Philharmonie, June 2023:
The 2nd Cello Concerto by Camille Saint-Saëns from 1902, which sounds so seductively light, casual and ingenious and is rightly finally finding its way into concert halls, features the young Canadian Bryan Cheng, whose slender and cultivated tone – flexible, firm, sonorous – should not only delight Saint-Saëns fans like me. Cheng performs the solo part with virtuosity, meandering between short tutti blocks. In the intervening Andante sostenuto, the gifted youngster plays so delicately sensitive and blissfully cantabile that every piano sounds wonderfully nuanced.
About his performances at the Queen Elisabeth Competition, Brussels (including with the Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie), May 2022:
In Brussels, he distinguished himself with powerful, solar and cultivated playing, enveloped in opulent sonorities.
About his performance with the Brussels Philharmonic in the finals of Queen Elisabeth Competition, May 2022:
Cheng shaped his performance with a constant sense of narrative, rising elatedly to match the first violin for a goosebump-inducing duet with the concertmaster to end the third movement [of the Dvorak Cello Concerto].
The internationally acclaimed, Berlin-based soloist is one of those wonderful artists who oozes confidence and conviction, knowing exactly what he wants to say with his music-making, and how to bring his ideas to life with plenty of personality and pizzazz.
The highly expressive player’s knack at easily slipping between the estimated 20-minute work’s [Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations] shifting moods were displayed throughout, from the second variation’s playful dialogue with orchestra as a particular highlight, to his soulful, recitative-like cadenzas worthy of an opera diva… Cheng’s richly resonant tone particularly in his lowest register allowed his lyrical, cantilena lines to sing during the sixth variation, while skipping through quicksilver runs during the fourth, performed with bulls-eye rhythmic acuity.
About his performance of Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with pianist Angela Hewitt, violinist Blake Pouliot, and conductor Laurence Equilbey leading the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, November 2022:
… the evening’s three soloists brought phenomenal energy and commitment to the Triple Concerto. Cheng’s passionate lyricism was a standout.
A great cellist: The great thing about the Pouliot-Cheng-Hewitt trio was that from the moment Bryan Cheng took the floor, we were reassured that this performance was from the perspective of dialogue (the almost mischievous games between Pouliot and Cheng) and reason. No one was going to try to be a big shot here, and all three soloists were playing in the same register of warm dialogue, which suits Angela Hewitt very well indeed.
In this trio, Bryan Cheng must really be mentioned as the one who set the tone. The more we hear this cellist, the more we like this simplicity, this art of not forcing anything. And the 1699 Stradivarius cello provided to him by the Canimex Foundation is a pure marvel.
About Cheng’s performance with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in the finals of Concours de Genève, October 2021:
The third to take the stage at Victoria Hall is 24-year-old Canadian Bryan Cheng…A beautiful performance, with a bit of late-romantic sentimentality and melancholy but no more than strictly necessary, without unnecessary flourishes and with very controlled dynamics. In the end he is the most applauded by the audience that fills the Victoria Hall.
About his concert at the Festival de Lanaudière, Québec, Summer 2021:
… he is a fine artist, distinguished, of great class… Bryan Cheng made a brilliant debut in the amphitheater.
… Bryan Cheng on his Tassini cello achieves powerfully contoured bass tones and the finest, tenderest heights with stupendous dynamics, sounding always cantabile, always beautiful, always perfectly in tune, and absolutely captivating.
Bryan Cheng [recipient of the 2017 Michael Measures Prize] has shown a depth of sensitivity and maturity that will secure him a distinctive place in the world of classical music.
Cheng sings the melancholy without schmaltz; the bitterness he gets exactly. Thus de Falla’s “Siete canciones” become razor-sharp character pieces and Cassadó’s solo suite an affair of austere, severe, yet dreamy beauty.
Bryan combines a dark, robust tone with jaw-dropping bravura…
brilliant…appear[ing] in fresh colours and afford[ing] much pleasure.
A full and elegant sound at the service of an easy and clear articulation, continuously attentive to the main line. Elegant, nuanced and gentle, an artist whose impulses always remain at the service of the true intention. Constant mastery, without pretentiousness, of technical demonstration.
