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Piano keys and success Once a prodigy, Yuja Wang is now at the height of her powers The pianist combines visual and aural performance to create total works of art
Sep 25th 2018 by G.O.
AGAINST the orchestral musicians, uniformly dressed in black, Yuja Wang shines like a jewel in the Royal Albert Hall in London. She sits, straight-backed, at the piano in a glittering sleeveless dress and unfeasibly high heels. She smiles and closes her eyes as she begins to play Prokofiev’s “Piano Concerto No.3”—one moment thrusting her head in accordance with the speed and passion of the music, the next allowing her fingers alone to convey coolness and tranquillity. She is technically brilliant and entertaining, so applause for her performances is seldom reserved. Her encores are almost as celebrated as her repertoires, encouraging Deutsche Grammophon to release an album this month of extra performances from her recent North American and European tour. Once seen, Ms Wang is hard to forget. The pianist was born in Beijing in 1987 to what she calls a “musical family”. Her mother a dancer, her father a percussionist, Ms Wang inherited a love of “hot-blooded” composers, particularly the “Russian Romantics” such as Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky, and an appreciation of the performative arts. She began her studies aged nine at the Beijing Conservatory and in her teenage years moved to Canada and then America for the tutelage of Gary Graffman, a renowned teacher of promising pianists (Lang Lang, a Chinese star to whom Ms Wang is often compared, is among his former pupils). Young artist awards piled up. Publications hailed her a prodigy, a wunderkind and a sensation. She broke onto the international classical music scene in 2007, standing in for Martha Argerich at the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Since then she has performed and recorded with some of the world’s most acclaimed conductors and orchestras. All her collaborators comment on the playfulness of her performances but the interpretative maturity she brings to the pieces. “I cannot tell you how much fun we have together,” Gustavo Dudamel, the conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, says. She “has an ability to showcase many qualities: expressive lightness, depth, brilliance”. Paavo Jarvi of the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Japan agrees. “Although she comes across as easy going, she is an exceptional combination of no-nonsense and fearless at the same time,” he says. She “has the highest level of professionalism and preparation”. Little wonder that composers write with her performance in mind. Ms Wang anticipates working with Esa-Pekka Salonen, a Finnish composer and conductor, whose works are reminiscent of the modernist, percussive pieces of the 20th century and which seem a perfect fit for her. John Adams, an American composer, is writing a new piano concerto at Ms Wang’s behest. Entitled “Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?” it points to her position as a charismatic and cheeky soloist with a sense of fire—a bass guitar and a “honky-tonk” piano will complement Ms Wang—as well as her skill. The 25-minute work is played in three movements with no breaks. Critics attribute Ms Wang’s popularity with aficionados and casual fans alike to her unpretentiousness, her “élan and daring” and her sheer power. She couples her mastery with a sense of adventure, and uses her encores to explore lighter pieces such as Mozart’s “Turkish March”. Her unprecedented combination of the visual and the musical is undeniably a factor, too. “Her alluring, surprising clothes don’t just echo the allure and surprise of her musicianship, though they certainly do that,” Zachary Woolfe summarised in the New York Times in 2013. “More crucial, the tiny dresses and spiky heels draw your focus to how petite Ms Wang is, how stark the contrast between her body and the forcefulness she achieves at her instrument. That contrast creates drama.” Janet Malcolm, in a profile for the New Yorker, thought that Ms Wang’s playing was less inspired when she deviated from her usual daring evening dresses. Ms Wang tells Prospero that her clothing is “a way of being and living creatively”. “Every dress can give some certain meaning to the music,” she observes, since “the first impact when the audience sees me is they see me—they don’t hear me”. She approaches each performance as a Gesamtkunstwerk: a total work of art, combining the visual and the aural. Her piano is a distinct force, not one that blends into the orchestra, and so it must be with her appearance. (Practicality is relevant to her sartorial choices, too. She says that they must be sleeveless—“for the freedom of the arms”—and “pack well” for her tours.) The totality of Ms Wang’s performance means that, in the eyes of many critics, she “represents a new breed” of musician: she is the “completely, thoroughly modern package” according to Stuart Isacoff, a writer and pianist. After winning the Musical America Artist of the Year award in 2017 and embarking on global tours, it is clear that Ms Wang is at the height of her powers. Quoting Gustav Mahler, she suggests that individuality is key to being a great artist: “Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire”. She certainly knows how to set audiences’ hearts aflame. 筆者是這麼回的： How beautiful rhymes of Chopin’s (CH’s) stylish reflection Yuja Wang depicts! I still exclaim her elegance on her album “Piano Sonatas & Etudes” in 2009, my first time I got familiar to the Chinese (C’s) modern prominent musician. On this album released with DG’s help, CH’s Piano Sonata (PS) #2 and Liszt’s PS, and the emotional integration with the composers’ soul and passion stick to the eagerness to win liberation is thicker than most of the contemporary pianists. A “challenging programme” uttered by an Amazon reader showed the DG’s audacity of the new trial in the era of the developing music deciphering regarding the new equipment’s innovation and the software that provides for the sound effect of pure image. “Not only her dazzling virtuosity, but especially that unique musical insight that surfaces each piece she plays and a clean structural conception running through the entire recital, highlight Yuja’s performance in sharp contrast to other virtuosos’ pyrotechnical renditions.”
Her fervent sense accompanies the vibrantly strident music sentence which opened a pathway new generation, new thinking model and new vision brought about. During the last decade, the fame of C’s musicians rises, surpassing that of Japan and Europe’s coeval ones. Since Beijing Olympic in 2008, C’s soft national wealth to a degree permeate through the numerous fields. The geopolitics’ vicissitude is mirrored on the market’s preference on literature and art. Wang and another 3, Lang Lang, Li Yun-di and Zhang Hao-chen attain the celebrity derived from their talent and the profound discourse on the classical know-how without facile strive.
Before the 4, the Vietnamese Đặng Thái Sơn at 60 who won the Asian first “International Chopin Piano Competition” (ICPC) is the fabulous senior of the CH music. Li was also the winner in 2000. Dr. Đặng held the concert last Nov 19 that assists him to “relive” the first love reflected on the CH’s Piano Concerto #2 with his 100-year-old mother, also his abecedarian teacher, and Kaohsiung-born The Chicago Sinfonietta conductor Chen Mei-Ann in cooperation with the NSO.
The perspicacious DG follows the global academic measurement of each musician’s reputation while the C’s Study fever’s expansion everywhere in the world. Wang is Gary Graffman’s best student who got the reputation since she uncovered the fruit of the comprehension in 2005 for the first time. Wang could play CH’s imploration and the transcendental meditation whose style is classified as the likes of Radu Lupu and Martha Argerich’s. Now Wang is compared to the only competent counterpart Olga Scheps, who serve as the largest-welcome Sony youth pianists. So does Lang Lang since 2010, and Li is the EMI artists. Both Olga and Wang are engrossed in the deduction of the CH’s fantasy, Russia music and German-center romance.
Since 2009, Wang had cooperation with many conductors, like Gustavo Dudamel and Claudio Abbado, and the audiences often feel the reverberation of the CH’s patriotism, Rachmaninoff’s grandiose impetus that seems be with the immaculate granularity. The note she interacts with is always lively, truly filled with the spirits and the content. Through the recordings, the fans peep getting together with the mind’s “transformation”, also her 2nd album’s title that claim another growing stage of her maturity. An insightful communication between her, the composers and the listeners makes her ideas of the 19th century’s classical music tide of the sentiment no one could present such kind of ever before.
Wang’s pieces of piano work are her expression of aplomb. The laconic and limpid keynotes in classical music she plays every concerts and recordings becomes one of the 21th century’s paragon of pianists. How she performs the classics every concert like Lang Lang, Li and Zhang is always mettlesome on the recall of the original sense of CH’s mind and the latter half century’s contemporary composers’. (1 of 2)
The parents of C’s players in their childhoods had fallen to them to learn the specific skill or cultivate the talent; by contrast, the approach is at a certain level called “burden”, whether it is sweet or formidable. In general, C’s players got fewer sense of the original idea composers “inscribed” on music sentences and the annotation by the authority or commentators. Yet the 4 got the soft ideas owing to the market mechanism’s aggression, that knew the higher layer than philosophy’s concern and subjects than the rest of Asia’s musician. Those who grew up in leftist nation under the socialist rule and tradition is indeed inured to either embrace or challenge fathomless matter, inclusively the very deep romance during the 19th century when the multifarious ideologies went diversified and competed in Europe. ICPC’s list of winners could prove it. Lang Lang’s play of keynotes is often filled with the great heart. He has the awesome endurance and charisma to tickle many audiences’ fancy, but his momentum on stage is a “surplus” of the ironic sounds shown in the interval solo play. Li demonstrates a bit interval characteristic of how CH made a unique logic, or the liberal mind in a mix of CH’s own sophistication and the pity of his own and his beloved motherland. In fact, Li’s fondness almost represents the faith to CH’s flawless personality.
As Wang’s most recordings on DG, there is few doubt as to her capability of music playing when it comes to the sales grade compared to other players. Yet Wang’s pieces of piano work few express the genuine composition in the face of the listeners; instead, she often performs a single or the part of the composition. That is, Wang is inclined to the commercialized orientation who nevertheless has rather thicker tangibility of the honesty of the cherished affection. (2 of 2) 原來的經濟學者原文極為稱讚王羽佳，以「at the height」來說能見度非常好的近況。筆者一開頭以印象中逛唱片行不經意看到一片正在推薦中的環球唱片，和筆者在看到這片的附近時候，是於2009年11月時，剛開始聽到的郎朗所喜好的作曲家的樂派相近，其中以蕭邦和李斯特附近的國民樂派和浪漫樂派為主。環球唱片一向是學院派的首選，在2009年幫王羽佳出了第一片「Piano Sonatas & Etudes」之後，隔年再出了第二片「Transformation」(筆者的第一部份倒數第二段) 除了筆者以英語在文中說明過之外，雖然和郎朗比還是生硬於樂句的聯結上，但是總體的美感很夠，尤其提到李斯特的曲子是需要高超的技法來詮釋的。反而王羽佳的錄音直逼百年來的幾位鋼琴大師，包括她的老師，Gary Graffman是在索尼有出盒裝的那位，筆者一開始在露天市集買賣二手唱片時的頭幾盒。王羽佳後來有跟隨她這位老師的腳步，2011年也錄過拉赫曼尼諾夫的第二號鋼琴協奏曲，有很粗獷封面的那張，2014年和杜達摩合作的是拉氏第三號的鋼琴協奏曲。 隨著中國的國力增加，軟實力的展現隨著世代的交替而有了新的創意與發展。除了世界上熟悉的亞運和奧運場上的獨霸，受國際大獎肯定的影視產業人員，諾貝爾獎及其他科學類與文學獎得主的多了不少炎黃子孫。在2000年後，兩個1982年出生的郎朗和在蕭邦大賽出線的李雲迪大放異彩，郎朗在2003年11月登上卡內基音樂廳，風靡全美。2009年11月及2010年10月郎朗曾經二度來台演出，筆者是在2009年11月月在博客來網路書店看到這片暢銷好評，第一次聽過郎朗，並聽過拉赫曼尼諾夫的第二號鋼琴協奏曲，深受感動。2005年時，1987年出生的王羽佳甫出道就很受音樂雜誌的推崇，一時之間王羽佳的名聲當年在世界音樂科的大專院校間傳開來。筆者在約一年多和二年多前的「Books & Arts」的文章，曾經借題發揮拿這三名作過粗略介紹，讓經濟學者的讀者也能瞭解除了舊蘇維埃、英美、歐陸和日本以外，新一波的詮釋方式和觀點。在此之前，越南出生的鄧泰山為一方之鳴已有二十多年之久。鄧和李都是EMI藝人過，並且都是沉穩內斂型的風格，比較能領會蕭邦和李斯特的作曲意境。另一位是張昊辰，也是擅長風格相近的曲目，張氏是1990年出生，年紀小了點，在19歲時，2009年6月獲得范．克萊本大獎，2016年5月獲壹週刊題青春老靈魂一抹，他從小到大喜歡的是巴哈及莫札特的調調，所以早熟而老練，和前三名有一些顯著的不同，很難得受到已故指揮大師洛林．馬捷爾的稱讚。 一般會認為，在二次大戰後的西方各國的年輕音樂家，現在的60-100歲之間的鋼琴師及指揮者比較能忠實反應原作曲者：從海頓、莫札特和貝多芬，到拉赫曼尼諾夫與伯恩斯坦等作曲家。這個比較是相對於中國、韓國和日本的古典音樂工作和表演者。在二次大戰後，日本曾經有小澤征爾、諏訪內晶子及西崎崇子，韓國有曹秀美和鄭京和，台灣二三十年前走紅而旅美的林佳靜，以及近年的曾宇謙和陳銳，中國的上述四位和傅聰、越南的鄧泰山和印度的祖賓．梅塔。筆者在2012年曾經看過紐約時報一篇「為什麼中國鋼琴家不可能成為國際大師」但不以為意(https://cn.nytimes.com/opinion/20121227/cc27letter/zh-hant/) ，亞洲各國的現代化力有未殆，但是不代表要被西方的文明或是想法壓抑住。這些成功的音樂家有求真求實際的態度，在考究的路上不失自己的風格。你可以說他們的努力是以對話的方式表現出來，而能夠有自己的一片天，也有的是正好自己雖然硬梆梆帶有諷刺，像郎朗那樣十幾年前曾經被提醒過，但是若在適當的彌補不足，比如加強和樂團的協調力於協奏曲，再作奔放一些，就很吃得開。也有個性天生太契合了，如李雲迪和蕭邦的個人特質頗為類似，順便走一點網紅的路。倒是這些亞洲出生的音樂家，思想上和德奧樂派於19、20世紀的調調相近，較為保守，作曲風偏向技術和流於形式，反而這些給這些大家們詮釋比較恰當。 除了筆者在這篇文章拿年紀相近的Olga Scheps 奧爾加以外，當今世上最成熟琴藝的女鋼琴家是皮耶斯MARIA JOÃO PIRES 和阿格麗希Martha Agerich。俄羅斯出生的奧爾加也是從蕭邦開始錄製起，後來也有舒伯特和俄羅斯的柴可夫斯基和拉赫曼尼諾夫的作品灌錄，其實她所獲得的評價也很高，正好是和DG競爭最兇的SONY的力捧年輕女鋼琴師。奧爾加的彈琴風格比較浪漫隨性了些，也給筆者很深刻的印象。 今天對於王羽佳的評價，大部份來說是肯定其技藝成熟，而確立了自己的成就。王羽佳的琴藝就算有樂句不是很完美，但是有帶著真誠而珍貴的情感，聽得出她想傳遞給聽眾的意象。有形的快慢、拍子的強弱會恰到好處，這些是作為一個成熟的鋼琴家應該有的前提，所以，商業化地一些兒說，王羽佳的「後市」--大概在詮釋十九、二十世紀的作曲家曲目來說，她將帶著稍強烈的自我風格--還是很可觀的。 以下附三篇經濟學者雜誌在文中所連結的參考文章。共三篇，因為New Yorker那篇很長，另外貼一篇轉錄 Restrained, Then Madly Lyrical: The Pianist as Spring Mechanism Yuja Wang at Carnegie Hall By ZACHARY WOOLFEMAY 17, 2013 Continue reading the main story Share This Page
By the time the pianist Yuja Wang had played a fifth encore to cap her exhilarating concert on Thursday evening at Carnegie Hall, I confess that while perhaps 90 percent of my attention was on her precise yet exuberant playing, a crucial 10 was on her skintight flame-colored dress. It seems that a high-minded, conscientious music critic should pay Ms. Wang’s signature attire no mind. Enough ink, certainly, has been spilled on the subject during her rise to prominence these past few years. But her vivid sartorial choices are far from incidental to the formidable effect of her playing. Her alluring, surprising clothes don’t just echo the allure and surprise of her musicianship, though they certainly do that. More crucial, the tiny dresses and spiky heels draw your focus to how petite Ms. Wang is, how stark the contrast between her body and the forcefulness she achieves at her instrument. That contrast creates drama. It turns a recital into a performance. Photo
Yuja Wang The pianist presented a program of mostly post-Romantic works in her recital on Thursday night at Carnegie Hall. Credit Ian Douglas for The New York Times And a performance, in the fullest sense of the word, was what Thursday’s program demanded. Ms. Wang offered an immersion in the overripe afterglow of 19th-century Romanticism: sonatas by Scriabin and Rachmaninoff, and “La Valse” by Ravel, all introduced by Lowell Liebermann’s “Gargoyles” (1989), a contemporary work that neatly evoked the fin-de-siècle decadence of the rest. To say that Ms. Wang barnstormed through these dreamy, theatrical works is true but drastically understates her range of expression. Her fortissimos were fearsome, but so, in a quieter way, were the longing melodic lines of the first movement of Rachmaninoff’s Sonata No. 2. Continue reading the main story Advertisement Continue reading the main story Ms. Wang began these melodies with a stiffness approaching self-consciousness before gradually relaxing into pure lyricism, giving a sense of the music’s tightening and loosening in grand cycles. Playing with daring deliberation, she came close to disconnecting the phrases of the slow second movement. It was a move that emphasized Rachmaninoff’s incipient modernity, as did her teasing out of jazzy figurations and Debussyian kaleidoscopic textures. Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Louder Stay on top of the latest in pop and jazz with reviews, interviews, podcasts and more from The New York Times music critics.
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The liquidity of her phrasing in the second movement of Scriabin’s Sonata No. 2 eerily evoked the sound of woodwinds. In that composer’s Sonata No. 6 she juxtaposed colors granitic and gauzy to eerily brilliant effect before closing the written program with a rabid rendition of the one-piano version of “La Valse,” accentuating the sickliness of Ravel’s distorted waltzes. By her apocalyptic finale, there was no question that the party of the 19th century was definitively over in the aftermath of World War I. But she offered a nostalgic glimpse back in her fourth encore, Chopin’s Waltz in C sharp minor. Ms. Wang returns to Carnegie on Oct. 22 with a program of Prokofiev, Stravinsky and more Chopin. I’ll see you there. A version of this review appears in print on May 18, 2013, on Page C7 of the New York edition with the headline: Restrained, Then Madly Lyrical: The Pianist as Spring Mechanism. Order Reprints| Todays Paper|Subscribe Review: Yuja Wang Tackles Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier,’ Assured to a Fault Image
Yuja Wang at Carnegie Hall.CreditCreditRichard Termine
· · In his monumental “Hammerklavier” Piano Sonata, Beethoven pushed the boundaries of what this form had been and took the piano itself into new realms of possibility and sound. On Saturday night at Carnegie Hall the brilliant Chinese pianist Yuja Wang played the “Hammerklavier” quite comfortably. That was the curious shortcoming of an otherwise vibrant, colorful and personal performance. Ms. Wang, 29, a prodigious virtuoso who brings charisma and a flair for fashion to the stage as well, is best known for elegant, technically scintillating performances of Romantic repertory and 20th-century works. In March, she gave a glistening account of the daunting solo piano part of Messiaen’s “Turangalîla” Symphony in the conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen’s performance with the New York Philharmonic. On Saturday, for the first half of her recital, she brought poise and sensitivity to two early Brahms ballades, and then offered a rhapsodic, poetic performance of Schumann’s fantastical, challenging “Kreisleriana,” a 35-minute suite. But Beethoven’s formidable “Hammerklavier” is a touchstone work that even some master pianists have been wary of. It is, of course, thrilling to hear it played with verve and command. Yet, to me the finest performances, however triumphant, also convey — in the moment — the way Beethoven is brashly reimagining what a sonata could be and a piano could do. Advertisement Murray Perahia captured this blend of mastery and struggle in the “Hammerklavier” performance he recently gave at David Geffen Hall. (It is not often two pianists play this piece in the same city in less than a week.) Mr. Perahia, 69, gave his all in a majestic, searching interpretation. If in moments he seemed pressed to his limits, and dropped some notes, this enhanced the sense of something monumental taking place. At the end, he looked exhausted and played no encores, which seemed right. How much more could he have given? Ms. Wang’s virtuosity goes well beyond uncanny facility. Right through this Beethoven performance she wondrously brought out intricate details, inner voices and harmonic colorings. The first movement had élan and daring. The scherzo skipped along with mischievousness and rhythmic bite. In the grave, great slow movement, she played with restraint and poignancy. She kept you on edge during the elusive transition to the gnarly, dense fugue, which she then dispatched with unfathomable dexterity. You have 4 free articles remaining. This was not a probing or profound “Hammerklavier.” But I admired Ms. Wang’s combination of youthful energy and musical integrity. Then she ruined it, for me at least, by playing five encores, suggesting just how much she may have held back in the Beethoven. She started with Liszt’s ingenious arrangement of Schubert’s “Gretchen am Spinnrade,” but also offered two shamelessly showy virtuoso pieces, played to the hilt: Vladimir Horowitz’s “Carmen” Fantasy and a tasteless, jazzy arrangement of Mozart’s “Turkish” Rondo. With each encore, Ms. Wang’s “Hammerklavier” receded further from memory. Mine seemed a minority reaction, however. The audience shouted bravos over and over. A webcast of this recital can be seen on medici.tv for 90 days and on wqxr.org for 30 days. A version of this article appears in print on May 16, 2016, on Page C5 of the New York edition with the headline: Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier,’ to a Fault. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe |
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