Yuja Wang gives a dazzling solo performance in the world premiere recording of a major new work specially written for her by her friend Teddy Abrams. Although originally conceived as a short companion composition to Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, Abrams’ Piano Concerto blossomed to become a 35-minute standalone showpiece. Celebrating the richness of America’s musical culture and the sheer depth and breadth of Yuja Wang’s virtuosity, the work now features …
Financial Times “Lindberg[‘s]… third piano concerto was tailored for Yuja Wang’s dazzling virtuosity; on Thursday she played this formidable score from memory and sounded commanding throughout, from thunderous assertion to caressing lyricism. This concerto, Lindberg said in an interview, is “the biggest piece I’ve written”, 30 minutes long in three movements. The result is alternately grand and intimately beautiful. There is a true dialogue between soloist and orchestra, both of whom play …
New York Classical Review 1. Music of Beethoven, Schoenberg, Ligeti, Scriabin, Albéniz and Kapustin. Yuja Wang. Packing Carnegie Hall without even announcing what she was going to play, the performance phenomenon that is Yuja Wang lit up unexpected corners of piano music in April. Arnold Schoenberg, György Ligeti, and the Ukrainian jazz/classical pianist Nikolai Kapustin are not sure winners with lovers of the piano’s Romantic core repertoire, but when Wang applied her vast resources …
The Guardian If ever two musicians seemed to be in their own separate worlds when playing together, it’s the violinist Leonidas Kavakos and pianist Yuja Wang. And yet the level of shared detail and purpose in this recital – a generous programme of three meaty sonatas and three encores – was proof of the ongoing strength of the longstanding occasional partnership between these star soloists. Much of the music’s sense of propulsion …
“Wang’s rendition of Shostakovich’s “Piano Concerto No. 1” was a dazzling and dynamic display. Wang treated the first theme of the opening movement (Allegro moderato) with delicacy and reflection, capturing its pensive, ambivalent mood. She likewise executed the festive second-theme with an obligatory alacrity… Each note’s timing, waxing and waning with masterful rubato, imbued the musical texture with a clear but unobtrusive waltz-like quality.” The Harvard Crimson
The Wall Street Journal If you’re going to write a piano concerto for the audaciously gifted Chinese-born superstar Yuja Wang, then why not make it a humdinger? That’s certainly the approach that the Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg took in composing his Piano Concerto No. 3, a 35-minute work of formidable technical challenges and winning musical ideas written expressly for Ms. Wang and given its premiere by the San Francisco Symphony led by Esa-Pekka Salonen …
Datebook – San Francisco Chronicle If you’re a composer writing a piano concerto for the extraordinary soloist Yuja Wang, you end up reckoning with the unearthly fact that she can do anything and everything at the keyboard. It doesn’t matter how many notes or chords you throw at her, or how rapidly you string them together — Wang is going to flash her unworried smile, tear through the score with effortless ease, and then sit …