Yuja Wang makes her highly anticipated return to Carnegie Hall on May 14, in recital featuring a spectacular programme including works by Brahms, Schumann, and Beethoven. Enjoy a video preview of the recital, which kicks off her ‘Triple Crown Tour’ and includes performances in New York City, Salzburg, and Beijing. This not-to-be-missed event will stream live via medici.tv (see below for video player) beginning at 8pm ET.
The performance will also receive a broadcast on WQXR Radio as part of their “Carnegie Hall Live” series.
The works selected for this event are comprised of highlights from the Germanic Romantic repertoire, and are reflective of the strengths of Ms. Wang’s playing, which has been described as “crystalline, sensitive, and musical … utterly composed, with hands and mind in balance” by The New Criterion. The complete programme includes two of Brahms’ Op. 10 Ballades (No. 1 in D Minor and No. 2 in D Major), Schumann’s Kreisleriana, Op. 16, and Beethoven’s epic “Hammerklavier” Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-flat Major, Op. 106. Please note only a handful of tickets remain for the performance, as most seating areas are now sold out at Carnegie Hall.
Program notes from medici.tv: Brahms, like Schumann, had a strong affinity to the characteristically Romantic genre of the short instrumental character piece. The closely related tonalities and motivic kinship of these two early ballades from his Op. 10 suggest that they were intended to be heard as a pair. The grim D-Minor Ballade was inspired by “Edward,” a traditional Scottish ballad about a son who murders his father, while its D-major companion evokes a more wistful mood.
German Romantic writer E. T. A. Hoffmann, who created the memorable character of the half-crazed Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler, was Robert Schumann’s soulmate and literary counterpart. Kreisleriana pays homage to its namesake in the form of eight fantasy-like pieces that also reflect the contrasting personalities of the composer’s fictional alter egos: the impulsive Florestan and the dreamy Eusebius.
With its soaring rhetoric and penetrating introspection, the “Hammerklavier” anticipates the musical language of Beethoven’s so-called late period. The centerpiece of the work is the intensely ruminative Adagio sostenuto, which German critic Paul Bekker famously called “the apotheosis of pain, of that deep sorrow for which there is no remedy, and which finds expression not in passionate outpourings, but in the immeasurable stillness of utter woe.