Yuja

I have a great admiration for the Chinese pianist Yuja Wang. She combines an extraordinary piano technique with a variety of touch and expression, playing the music from inside, as it were, and responding to the mood of every bar and phrase. A pianist to whom I can listen even when I am not too keen on the music she is playing.

Her latest CD features her usual repertoire preferences: Rachmaninov, Scriabin, Ligeti and Prokofiev. To these favourites her programmes also frequently embrace Liszt, Scarlatti and Ravel. Rachmaninov, Scarlatti and Ravel wrote my kind of music. Does anyone other than pianists really like the music of Alexander Scriabin? It usually belongs to a musical class that I deem “I ain't going nowhere”. The first movement of Prokofiev's piano sonata no.8 on this CD belongs to the same somewhat shapeless form, though things pick up in the second and third movements. Yuja's pianism is extraordinary here. Scriabin's 10^th sonata wanders on, but only for just under twelve minutes; I know that however many times I listen to it, it will always be totally unfamiliar. The three very short Ligeti pieces on the disc are attractive, and show off Yuja's technique. The four Rachmaninov pieces are familiar territory for me, and the pianist.

Yuja Wang in her chosen repertoire is a real phenomenon; a virtuoso pianist plus. I have no idea as to whether she plays Bach, Mozart, Beethoven or Schubert, but it would be interesting to hear her take on a work such as Bach's Goldberg Variations (just as Beatrice Rana impressed me greatly in the same work). In the meantime: Viva Yuja !

As an addendum: why is the CD called "THE Berlin Recital"? Had she never played there before, and never will again? If not, it should be "A Berlin Recital". And do we really need eight photos of Yuja (though, of course, none of Rachmaninov or Prokofiev).  DG ain't what it used to be.