WQXR,
By Tom Huizenga,
“When critics talk about Yuja Wang, they continue to reach for superlatives. Earlier this month Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times referred to her as one who “eats the world’s greatest keyboard challenges for breakfast with one hand tied behind her back.” The headline for the Orange County Register review of the same concert Swed gushed over read: “Yuja Wang astonishes in recital …” And a New York Times review from three years ago contains words such as “apocalyptic” and “exhilarating.”
If she reads her reviews, the pressure for Wang could be formidable. But she thrives in the spotlight, and as she told NPR in 2013, performing is how she leaves the solitary musician’s life behind. “The only time you actually get to communicate is onstage with music,” she said.
Wang had plenty to communicate in this Carnegie Hall recital, especially considering its centerpiece — Beethoven’s longest piano sonata, the notoriously strenuous “Hammerklavier,” Op. 106 in B-flat. In his book Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph, Jan Swafford describes the 45-minute work, specifically the outer movements, as “excessive beyond ease and beyond pleasure, sometimes nearly beyond human, though they enfold moments of wonderful beauty. The superhuman and the intimately human are both part of the Hammerklavier.”
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Image: Ebru Yildiz/for NPR