Yuja Wang travels to Vienna for three concerts at the Wiener Konzerthaus this month. On January 26, she performs with Martin Grubinger and his Percussive Planet Ensemble including Martin Grubinger Sen., Leonard Schmidinger, and Alexander Georgiev. Following their performance, Yuja plays two concerts on January 30 & 31 with the Wiener Symphoniker led by Lorenzo Viotti.
Martin Grubinger and his ensemble are frequent collaborators with Ms. Wang, recently performing together at Carnegie Hall last October, part of Yuja’s Perspectives Series. At Carnegie Hall, the ensemble received rave reviews with The New York Times praising the artists: “[Grubinger wielded] four mallets with such speed they tend to blur; yet his articulation couldn’t be clearer. Neither he nor Ms. Wang seemed to drop a note all night.”
On January 26, the program will consist of Bartók’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, Xenakis’ Okho, Ligeti’s Études including Fanfares, Der Zauberlehrling and Désordre, as well as Kapustin’s Variations, John Psathas’ One Study, and Arturo Márquez’s Danzón No. 2 .
Ms. Wang will join the Wiener Symphoniker under the direction of Lorenzo Viotti for concerts on January 30 & 31 where she will perform Schumann’s colorful Piano Concerto in a minor. Completing the program is Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10, a work he began composing shortly after Stalin’s death and has been regarded as “a portrait of a dictatorship”.