A recital by the Chinese pianist Yuja Wang has been advertised by the Southbank Centre with the aid of a quote from the Chicago Classical Review trumpeting that she is ‘the undisputed reigning rock star of classical music’. Trashy hyperbole like this is only appropriate in the sense that she could fill the Festival Hall twice over, because stars now seem to be the saviours of the business.
Yuja Wang, however, is indeed exceptional. Her virtuosity is extraordinary – no other pianist alive can match her preternatural speed and accuracy.
Her repertoire is huge, she regularly commissions new works, and she plays in interesting places: in September, for example, she’ll be creating the soundtrack to a David Hockney exhibition at the Lightroom in King’s Cross.
At the Festival Hall she marched on like a sequinned marionette in impossibly high stilettos, and launched into Samuel Barber’s Sonata in E flat minor which usually comes over as a piece of dour modernism. But under Yuja’s fingers the work sparked into vivid life, every note pellucid, every phrase joyous.
Then came a selection from Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and Fugues, those being that composer’s homage to Bach.
These miniatures are like musical aphorisms, or character sketches, and they’re full of parodies – of the waltz, the can-can, the foxtrot, and the tarantella. The numbers which Yuja had put together were all either fast or extremely fast, and each played anarchic tricks with tonality, and the result was revelatory.
No revelations in Chopin’s four Ballades, to deliver which this ever sartorially inventive pianist changed into a 19th century ball dress. These majestic works are the apogee of Romantic pianism: perfection incarnate, and you tamper with them at your peril.
There were a few moments when Yura did tamper – notably by gratuitously accentuating inner voices in what should have been smooth runs in the second piece – but by and large these works emerged with the necessary brilliance.
Game over? After a scintillating (but not instantly identifiable) encore, it seemed so. But another encore followed, and then another, then yet another, and the whole thing turned into a party, with the host yielding to ecstatic demands for yet more of her favourite things, jazz included. This too was delightfully revelatory – of a new and unsuspected funster.