By Lyn Bronson
Yuja Wang is a phenomenal talent. Of this there is no question. She has recently been featured on the cover of Gramophone and International Piano, and much has been made of her new prestigious five-disk contract with Deutsche Grammophon – the first two disks having already won considerable critical acclaim. Only 23 years old, Wang has blazed a path of extraordinary successes in the past two years that has pushed her to the forefront of emerging young pianists.
It is significant that one of the boosts to her career has been her performances on YouTube. At the age of 10, when many pre-pubescent young American girls are putting away their Barbie dolls and discovering makeup, designer jeans and underwear from Victoria’s Secret, Wang was being videotaped in live concerts performing works as mature and difficult as Chopin’s Etude in C-sharp minor, Op. 10, No. 4, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee” (the Rachmaninoff version, not the virtuoso one by Georgy Cziffra which she was to discover later and ultimately play better than Cziffra himself). Incidentally, her performance of the Cziffra version is something you just have to see and hear for yourself, for it is a remarkable demonstration of pianistic agility and effortless virtuosity that would have been the envy of Vladimir Horowitz.
This certainly has been Yuja Wang’s weekend in San Francisco. After appearing with the San Francisco Symphony with Michael Tilson Thomas on Friday, here she was two days later playing a Sunday evening recital at Herbst Theater presented by San Francisco Performances. The bottom line is, after all this advance publicity and hype, does she live up to her reputation?
When all was said and done, her performance at Herbst Theater was somewhat disturbing. Her opening works, three Schubert/Liszt song transcriptions, Gretchen am Spinnrade, auf dem Wasser zu singen and Der Erlkönig, set the tone for the evening. Exaggerated dynamics, excessive speeds, spikey accents, and mannered phrasing tended to rob these three transcriptions of the beautiful effects of which they were capable. After heavy handed performances of the first two songs (with the second one, auf dem Wasser zu singen being the more successful of the two), Wang began the repeated octaves of Der Erlkönig banged out with a painfully ugly fortissimo. Except for a few lovely moments where she suggested the Erlkönig singing sweetly in a sinister manner to the son, “Du liebes Kind,” with a truly beautiful pianissimo, most of her performance was so brutally overplayed that it produced harsh, dissonant overtones suggesting Schubert/Liszt in the style of Karl-Heinz Stockhausen.
Although there were beautiful moments in Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes (played without the addition of the six supplementary etudes omitted by Schumann), this was an aggressive performance, once again with exaggerated hard-driven tempos and painfully bangy sounds.
After intermission, Wang gave us a glimpse of how gorgeously she can play in two Scriabin Preludes and the Poème in F-sharp Major. In these three lovely works, she was no longer showing off her technical prowess, but rather creating a lovely mood that was totally beguiling. An additional Scriabin work, the Etude in G-sharp minor, Op. 8, no. 9, unfortunately relapsed into an excess of harsh overplaying
Wang ended her program with a strong, percussive performance of Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 6 in A major. The raw explosive energy inherent in this work seemed suited to her high voltage energized personality, and the overall performance made the strongest effect of the evening. There was still a considerable amount of excessive pounding that produced ugly clangorous sounds, but this work can take it.
Responding to a standing ovation (by no means unanimous, for some in the audience remained seated), Wang gave us two encores: a personal and heart-felt performance of Chopin’s Waltz in C-sharp Minor, Op. 64, No. 2 and a fleet, dazzling performance of the Scarlatti Sonata in G Major, K.455.
In what direction will Ms. Wang’s career progress? It has often been pointed out that when a pianist sits down at the piano, you can tell in the first 30 seconds whether the performer’s attitude is “I love these pieces and want to share them with you,” or “I am going to amaze you with my virtuoso technique.” The problem is that when an artist begins to show off, the music immediately suffers. Last night’s recital at Herbst Theater suggested that Ms. Wang is headed up the virtuoso path. Let’s hope someday she will retrace her steps and achieve her true calling as a truly expressive and emotionally (not just technically) exciting pianist, which should be her true destiny.
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