EIF Review: Yuja Wang

Lindsay McMurdo writes:

Expectations, naturally, were running very high. Yuga Wang! In recital! Twelve months after her much-acclaimed Festival performance with the Oslo Philharmonic, the classical world’s closest equivalent to Taylor Swift this year chose to fly solo with a programme of Chopin, Shostakovich and Barber before an inevitably packed and rapt Usher Hall audience.

Chopin’s Ballades 1 and 2 got things off to a shaky start. While totally on top of the considerable technical challenges (never in doubt with Wang), there was little sense of either piece’s episodic twists and turns being fashioned into a coherent whole. Moments of excessive rubato (yes, Chopin is Romantic, but not that Romantic) alternated with some wild over-pacing to unsettling effect, not helped by a curious imbalance between an often over-dominant left hand fighting an under-powered right.

Wang displayed much more affinity with six of Shostakovich’s spiky, humorous, almost throwaway Preludes, topped and tailed by a Prelude and Fugue. Here, her deftness and lightness of touch were a delight and the final fugue, delivered with a relentless intensity of rhythm, brought the first half to a rousing conclusion.

“Wang’s complete technical mastery is beyond question, and her market positioning unassailable. However, her motivation seems unclear. What does she actually want to do with all this talent?”

After the break, Barber’s Piano Sonata saw Wang on a more even keel, especially in the 2^nd and 4^th movements which showcased her faultless finger work during their many fearsome contrapuntal passages. And – at last! – the 3^rd movement Adagio produced an interlude of calm, measured musicality delivered in a lush, resonant tone.

Then back to Chopin for Ballades 3 and 4, a much more coherent, rounded performance than the first half Chopin. Much less frenetic, much more considered. And in the more lyrical moments of the 4^th, Wang again – as in the Barber – showed that when she slows down and dares to open up slightly, she is just as capable of moving an audience as wowing them.

No danger of that for the encores, obviously. Three in total (unannounced by Wang – why can’t they just tell us?!), the first apparently by Philip Glass, the second possibly by – or certainly influenced by – Prokofiev, the third unknown to this listener. All three a blizzard of notes, delivered perfectly.

And therein lies both a small part of the appeal and a large part of the problem, at least to this reviewer. At 37 (way too old now to be riding the prodigy bandwagon) Wang’s complete technical mastery is beyond question, and her market positioning unassailable. However, her motivation seems unclear. What does she actually want to do with all this talent? To dazzle and impress? Or to genuinely move and enlighten? On the evidence of Monday’s performance, it’s the former. But there was plenty of evidence that if she just pulled back slightly and dared to reveal a bit more of herself, she could achieve the latter. And that would be a wonderful thing to behold.

Chopin, of course, as for any pianist, is precisely the composer to help her choose.