Grammy-Nominated Pianist Yuja Wang Releases Her Second Deutsche Grammophon Solo Recital on April 13, 2010

By -

Yuja Brings Technical Virtuosity and Sophisticated Musicality to Stravinsky, Scarlatti, Brahms and Ravel

“She seems to have everything: speed, flexibility, pianistic thunder and interpretive nuance.” – The New York Times

Though only 23 years old, Chinese pianist Yuja Wang has already begun to attract attention around the world for her blazing technique and mature interpretations. Her debut recording, Sonatas & Etudes, was nominated for a Grammy and she returns with an all-new recital – Transformation­ – which categorically demonstrates that she is a young master of the Steinway. The recital will be available April 13, 2010 from Deutsche Grammophon and Yuja will appear throughout North America in a variety of recital and concert performances.

The art of planning a recital is always a unique and personal experience for every artist. While she understands the impressive quality of virtuosic music (and can certainly dispatch towering chords and lightening quick runs), Yuja prefers to present herself as a serious musician and enjoys lyrical, big, romantic pieces the most. For this recital, transcription emerges as the unifying theme. This idea of taking a work written for a different instrument or the entire symphony orchestra, and re-working it for the piano fits with Yuja’s views on the instrument itself: the piano is “just the instrument that could do whatever I want to do with music. I love music. It is what interests me. It is what intrigues me.”

For this recital Yuja begins with Stravinsky’s own adaptation of three movements from his ballet, Petrushka. Rather than simply transcribe the orchestral version, Stravinsky sought to compose purely pianistic music. The finished score, some of the most difficult in the solo piano’s repertoire, was written for Arthur Rubinstein and gives the pianist ample opportunities to showcase outstanding technical talent. Ravel also transcribed his own orchestral work for solo piano, but without the overt purpose of providing a showpiece. His remarkable re-interpretation of the Viennese waltz is an orchestral work of immense instrumental color and ambience – something which Yuja evokes by reflecting Ravel’s orchestral score through the prism of the piano.

The Brahms Variations on a Theme of Paganini is a similarly technically difficult, but emotionally rich, score allowing Yuja to demonstrate many aspects of her playing. The work plainly and simply presents the theme (that of Paganini’s famous Caprice No. 24 in A minor for solo violin) and then proceeds to present 26 variations of varying difficultly and character. Yuja follows the sequence of variations as ordered by Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, a pianist she greatly admires.

With the rainbows of color and thundering technique needed for Stravinsky, Brahms and Ravel, the two Scarlatti sonatas provide briefly cleansing respites. Though not without technical challenges (the pianist must always remain alert and attentive to even the smallest details), these works allow the listener short chances to prepare for the next musical storm as conjured by Yuja.

Born in Beijing in 1987, Yuja began studying piano at age six, with her earliest public performances taking place in China, Australia and Germany, and went on to study at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing under Ling Yuan and Zhou Guangren. Following three years, from 1999 to 2001, at the Morningside Music summer program at Calgary’s Mount Royal College, an artistic and cultural exchange program between Canada and China, Yuja moved to Canada and began studying with Hung Kuan Chen and Tema Blackstone at the Mount Royal College Conservatory. In 2002, when Yuja was 15, she won Aspen Music Festival’s concerto competition and moved to the U.S. to study with Gary Graffman at The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she graduated in 2008. In 2006 Yuja received the Gilmore Young Artist Award.

In Concert:
4/16-18/2010 Bartok: Concerto no. 2 Miami, FL
4/20/2010 Recital Costa Mesa, CA
4/22/2010 Recital San Francisco, CA
4/23/2010 Recital Santa Barbara, CA
4/25/2010 Recital Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA
4/29/2010 Recital Philadelphia, PA
5/15/2010 Recital Detroit, MI
5/22/2010 Recital Washington DC
6/17/2010 Ravel & Stravinsky San Francisco, CA
6/18/2010 Ravel & Stravinsky Los Angeles, CA
6/19/2010 Ravel & Stravinsky San Francisco, CA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Role of Music in Opera

By -
There are numerous books on the topic, and every composer, librettist, director, singer and audience member has their opinion as to what role the music should play in an opera. In a play without music, the words ought to support the meaning behind a character's actions. However, in the case of action movies, often times the action is what tells the story and there aren't words, just images to forward the plot. We might hear music to accompany action, build tension, but the action tells the story. Musicals tend to speak until the emotion of the moment just "has" to break out in song - unless it's something like "Mama Mia" where the dialog is the rails we travel on between songs; the songs themselves, written before the concept of the musical, are the focus of the production, while the story is secondary. Operas are a different beast. The music provides emotion to the words spoken, but it also plays the role of ambience when there is only action. In ...
Read more

Episode 210b: Joyeuse le départ

By -
Image
Podcast:  Play in new window  |  Download Subscribe:  Apple Podcasts  |  Android  |  Google Play  |  Stitcher  |  TuneIn  |  RSS Provost Cunningham has Transmigrated, but to where! What is Dr Sage going to do with his body? And how can she bring home her friends, Abigail and Erasmus, without also bring home Cunningham? What are they going to say when they find the “skeleton” she’s hiding in her closet? Cast: Eddie Louise Clark  as Dr Sage Chip Clark  as Professor Savant Justin Bremer  as the Narrator Emily Riley Piatt  as Abigail Entwhistle, Calypso & Dean Stewart Written by  Eddie Louise Theme music by  Unwoman Sound Design by  Chip Michael
Read more

Teaching Composition – What are we trying to achieve

By -
In the process of learning composition I have spent time with a number of instructors who have encouraged me to write twelve-tone, pitch-class, electro-acoustic and other forms of experimental techniques. No matter how much I might understand and appreciate the work of other composers in the genres, these are not forms of music I resonate with. They are simply not forms of music I listen to and I struggle with the idea of writing them. However, in a Master Class by Libby Larsen she made the comment, “Learn them all, because all forms of music have something to offer.” This I very much agree. There are elements of each of the above mentioned forms (and others) that I do resonate with. Berg’s Violin Concerto is a beautiful twelve-tone work, although it is possible to look at numerous sections of the music with a “tonal” analysis. Another composer friend, Gary Bachlund commented that using these techniques can narrow the choices for how to compose a piece of work. If you look at ...
Read more