To the outside observer, Yuja Wang, may seem more like a Rock ‘n’ Roll star than a concert pianist. With her outlandish dress sense and shock of black hair that would make Sid Vicious weep, the Chinese musician does not necessarily fit the stereotype of a classical virtuoso.
In person, the 29-year-old seems an effulgent, if slightly idiosyncratic character. Her smile is infectious, her laugh even more so, and she doesn’t immediately appear to be the one who is currently turning the world of classical music on its head. Yuja Wang’s playing bears all the hallmarks of a gifted pianist: an energetic joie-de-vivre coupled with unbelievable dexterity; a genius that transcends the tradition of classical piano. Such brilliance from the young starlet has earned her a spot at Beijing’s National Centre for Performing Arts (NCPA) as its first artist in residence, comprising six curated concerts, as well as masterclasses, lectures, and more.
But beneath the bright and bubbly persona and incredible skill, there is a Daedalian, almost contumacious streak to the musician.
Born in 1987 in Beijing to a dancer mother and percussionist father, Wang began studying piano at the age of six. A year later she began a three-year course at the Chinese capital’s Central Conservatory of Music, after which she travelled alone to study at the Mount Royal Conservatory in Canada. By 15 she had been accepted into the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, studying under renowned piano teacher Gary Graffman.
Intelligence and good taste
According to Graffman, while her talent and technique were undeniably impressive, it was rather the “intelligence and good taste” of her interpretations that initially set her apart from the rest. Describing her as incredibly self-critical, he has “previously praised her speed at which she learned repertory, her broad range of artistic interests, her sense of humor and her ability to produce a gorgeous sound&.
Yuja has made a habit of doing – and being – the unexpected since exploding onto the scene in the late nineties. Known for her intricate delicacy, her fastidious attention to musical detail and her tireless work ethic, she has taken on Bela Bartók’s willfully complicated, and at times perhaps even tortuous ‘Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion’ for her first appearance at the new concert hall.
The music of Bartók, whose complexities – much like Yuja Wang – are often difficult to grasp, and even more so to unravel, does not always fall easily on the untrained ear. Hailed alongside Franz Liszt as one of Hungary’s greatest composers, and indeed one of the most important of the twentieth century, Bartók is lauded as a misunderstood pioneer of ethnomusicology – the study of various different cultural approaches to creating music – but his music has been referred to as strange, bleak and fiendishly difficult to master.
In a review written in British newspaper The Observer in 1923, writer Percy A. Scholes wrote of the composer’s heavy touch: “If Bartók’s piano compositions should ever become popular in this country… I believe that it will be found that piano manufacturers will refuse to hire out pianos for the recitals of its alumni, insisting that these shall always be bought outright, and the remains destroyed on conclusion.”
See more at euronews & enjoy a selection of images from Yuja’s visit to the 798 Art District at this link