Yuja Wang Transformation is Beyond Expected Brilliance

By -

The transformation is not just in the music but in the extraordinary skill displayed by Yuja Wang's performance - vastly improved over her previous award winning CD

Yuja Wang releases her second CD Transformation with music by Stravinsky, Scarlatti, Brahms and Ravel. I suppose everyone expects a second album to be better than the first, but after Yuja won a Grammy with Sonata & Etudes is that really a reasonable expectation? Well, when you hear how well she plays on Transformation, it is not only reasonable, it is amazing just how much she has grown as a pianist only a year on from her debut CD. She was good before but now Yuja is absolutely astounding.

Transformation is not only an exploration in the transformation of music through the 27 variations of Brahms "Variations on a theme by Paganini" op. 35 and Stravinsky's puppet Petruska but also the transformation of a young pianist on the road to greatness. Sergei Diaghilev, the founder of Ballet Russes, said of Ravel's La Valse "...it is not a ballet. It is the portrait of a ballet, the painting of a ballet." Yuja Wang deftly paints the scenes with her fingers dancing across the keys creating each of the intricate moves with the same skill of a world class ballet company. Under the hands of Yuja Wang the music becomes not just a colorful tableau, a picture of the action on stage, but captures the shifts and gliding motion of dancers - beautifully securing the subtleties of the orchestral sliding melody with endless grace.

There are two tracks on this CD by Scarlatti showing Yuja's depth of musical expression. It is one thing to fly across the keyboard in a flurry of notes as occasionally demanded in the Brahms or the Stravinsky pieces. But with Scarlatti there is a simple grace requiring an emotional journey for the performer. These sonatas by Scarlatti require individual expression of the interweaving lines of music - allowing each one to float up and out as it gains prominence, then drift into the background for other themes to take the foreground. Yuja breathes such delicacy of mood into the music where it stops being pianistic and just becomes an emotional journey "a little bit of sunshine between the big dark works" as Michael Church mentions in the liner notes.

If you enjoy piano music this is a CD not to be missed, but classical music lovers of all types will be amazed and the skill and beauty Yuja conveys with her playing. When Yuja Wang comes to town don't hesitate getting tickets to see her perform live. As a pianist she ranks among the best you will ever see as is evidenced by her latest album Transformation. With this album she has improved on last year's Grammy winning performance.

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