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Stories   >   Yuja Wang - The Berlin Recital. Fabulous piano sound to capture large-hall, high-impact playing / GRAMOPHONE

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Yuja Wang - The Berlin Recital. Fabulous piano sound to capture large-hall, high-impact playing / GRAMOPHONE

Posted: October 28, 2022

Internationally-acclaimed pianist, Yuja Wang released her new album of solo works, The Berlin Recital via Deutsche Grammophone - a survey of landmark works by the late-romantic era and 20th century composers: Rachmaninov, Scriabin, Ligeti and Prokofiev. In anticipation of the full recital release, a digital-only EP of Encores is available today. The album was recorded live in Berlin, as part of a North-American and European tour.

Yuja Wang's philosophy of music is both simple and profoundly complex. "I want to relate all life to music," she recently told veteran British critic Fiona Maddocks. The Beijing-born pianist's latest album captures the white heat of solo works by Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, Scriabin and Ligeti, a trio of renowned Russians paired with one of the late 20th century's greatest composers. The Berlin Recital was recorded live this summer at the Berlin Philharmonie's Kammermusiksaal during Yuja's extensive solo tour of North America and Europe. The Yellow Label also recorded her sublime series of Berlin encore pieces to form a separate EP, which spans everything from the riffs and roulades of Nikolai Kapustin's jazz-tinged Toccata to Earl Wild's sonorous transcription of the Pas de Quatre from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake.

Russian music opened Yuja Wang's heart to the western classics. As an infant, she watched her mother, a dancer, rehearse Swan Lake. The beauty of the experience resonated long after her first encounter with Tchaikovsky. She began picking out melodies on the piano at home, her parents' wedding gift, and received her first piano lessons at the age of six. Russian art and culture had reached deep into China, delivered by strong connections between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic. Russian-trained musicians taught everywhere from Harbin in the northeast to Shanghai on China's Pacific coast.

Yuja's first piano teacher, with whom she studied from seven to the age of 14, studied with a teacher from the famously expressive Russian school of pianism. "My teacher talked a lot about sound," she recalls. "She really loved Evgeny Kissin, so I heard all his Chopin recordings when I was nine. My teacher also liked Martha Argerich, while I liked Alfred Cortot; I found him extremely poetic and very inspiring. Vladimir Horowitz? I don't care what other people think – for me, he's just so gripping. And Rachmaninov – very sincere playing."

After five years at the Beijing Conservatory and a life-changing spell at the Calgary Conservatory's Academy for Gifted Youth, Yuja was invited to join the high-flyers at the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Her mentors there included Leon Fleisher, who had studied during childhood with Artur Schnabel, and Gary Graffman, a pupil of the Russian-American Isabelle Vengerova. Russian music was never far from Yuja's fingers during her time at Curtis. She made her international breakthrough in 2007 as a last-minute replacement for Martha Argerich, performing Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra to critical acclaim, and included Scriabin's "Sonata Fantasy" on her DG debut album two years later. Her Yellow Label discography has grown with recordings of piano concertos by Rachmaninov and Prokofiev and solo showpieces by Scriabin and Stravinsky.

"Those Russian pieces have a way of bringing out every emotion, the nostalgic feelings in us all," says Yuja. "They make us feel really human. But at the same time, it's as if they're larger than life. They're about something bigger than us, yet they're also fun for an audience. And there's a real difference between each composer, which is clear in the pieces in my new album. Prokofiev is so dark and so powerful and can be caustic and acid, edgy. Rachmaninov is just pure romance, or a little jazzy – but not very sentimental. And Scriabin, of course, is a completely different world."

GRAMOPHONE writes….‘Exceptional artistry, technical perfection and boundless imagination’ it says on the back cover. Such hype normally puts my back up. But on this occasion I’ll happily endorse it.

To start, as Yuja Wang does, with one of the most well-flogged warhorses in the repertoire, in the shape of the Rachmaninov G minor Prelude, would seem to be asking for trouble, and her opening bars do flirt with sensationalism by giving so much so soon. But that would be to underestimate her exceptional resources of dynamics, tone and accent. Similarly, her rubato in the middle section is strikingly pliant; yet it never breaks the broad line, and the layering of the texture is superbly orchestral, while the reprise shows her ability to give sharp profile to her phrasing at either dynamic extreme.

In the first of her two C minor Études-tableaux she is as tempestuous and temperamental as the music demands: some might even say more than it demands. But she never loses her head, and her colours are original without being wilful. As the slower Étude-tableau demonstrates, her ‘boundless imagination’ is equally evident in her pedalling, and in both the B minor Prelude and Scriabin’s Sonata No 10 she moves smoothly between feathery, evocative touches and maximum eruptive volatility.

The three Ligeti Études are supreme tests of pianistic colouring as well as intellectual agility, and here too Wang offers a tour de force of quasi-orchestral detail. I have not carried out a forensic-level comparison with Aimard but the general impression he gives is certainly more strenuous and less streamlined.

Prokofiev’s Sonata No 8 demands a longer-range grasp of drama, and here too Wang rises to the challenge. Again her weighting of the component parts of every texture is a marvel to behold, and this in turn enables the outer movements to fly rather than merely to bludgeon, as they sometimes do. Occasionally a slight left-before-right desynchronisation helps her along, which I can imagine some finding a little mannered, especially in the Andante sognando slow movement, where her rubato also arguably detracts more than it adds. To rival Richter’s classic, though admittedly more drily recorded and plain-speaking, 1962 account would require some reining-in of her instinct to seduce and dazzle by sonoristic means, and a transfer of that energy into more probing for philosophical depth. On the other hand, Prokofiev’s innate exhibitionism is undeniably done full justice, while the finale’s crucial ‘irresolute’ reminiscence of the first movement also rings emotionally true. The uber-exuberant last pages provoke a torrent of applause that is as fully earned as the hype accompanying the disc.

Anyone hitherto more put off than drawn in by Yuja Wang’s glamorous image may have to do some rethinking in the light of this recital. Fabulous piano sound, too: to capture large-hall, high-impact playing such as this without compromise or distortion is an achievement in itself.

Yuja Wang - The Berlin Recital makes GRAMOPHONE's Top 10 Prokofiev recordings. His music had a profound effect on the 20th century and continues to inspire audiences today through music for ballet, film and concert hall. We choose our top 10 Prokofiev recordings, with a bonus at the end!

'Exceptional artistry, technical perfection and boundless imagination’ it says on the back cover. Such hype normally puts my back up. But on this occasion I’ll happily endorse it.'

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