“Cleveland Orchestra and guests pit order against wildness, and everyone wins”


Cleveland.com, Zachary Lewis

“Wang, unlike “Parables,” was a known quantity. Long before the artist, a regular and popular guest in Cleveland, sat down at the piano between a three-man percussion team at the front of the stage, one knew with near certainty how thoroughly she’d devour Bartok’s Piano Concerto No. 1. (Her graceful encore, on the other hand, Schubert’s “Gretchen am Spinnrade,” came as a delightful, diaphanous surprise.)

It’s a prickly thing, that Bartok, a piece at once thorny and sparkling, off-putting and powerfully alluring. All of these qualities Wang conveyed fully and then some, winding organically between displays of raw percussive strength, torrents of musical hail, and eerie musings like waltzes from some haunted house.”