Yuja Wang

»Wang’s playing had unusual power, depth, and brilliance… Her concentration was particularly impressive. As soon as a performance began, everything else seemed to fade away… She can rely on her musical abilities and proved it here at the highest level.« Los Angeles Times, review of a series of Rachmaninoff concert performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel (February 2023) Exclusive interviews with Yuja Wang Watch on STAGE+ Yuja Wang is considered one of the most significant artists of her generation and knows how to captivate listeners of all ages. Critics highlight her virtuosity and technical mastery, as well as her charismatic stage presence. Yet, for the pianist, her art serves emotional expression and musical interpretation; technique must never be an end in itself. Her artistic credo is both simple and complex: »I want to relate all of life to music,« she once told The Observer (London). Yuja Wang was born on February 10, 1987, into a musical family in Beijing. As a child, she watched her mother, a dancer, rehearse Swan Lake. This experience stayed with her long after her first encounter with Tchaikovsky. She began to pick out melodies on the piano her parents had received as a wedding gift and started piano lessons at age six. She made rapid progress and was admitted to the Beijing Conservatory. Important impulses for her musical and personal development came in 1999 when she went to Canada to attend the Morningside Music Summer Course at Mount Royal College in Calgary; she then became the youngest student ever at the Mount Royal Conservatory. In 2002, she won the concerto competition at the Aspen Music Festival and became a student of the renowned concert pianist and educator Gary Graffman at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Her professional career had long begun when Wang graduated from the Curtis Institute in 2008. After her sensational debut with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in 2005, media interest was high – »A star is born,« newspapers headlined. Her international breakthrough came in March 2007 when she stepped in at short notice for Martha Argerich as a soloist in Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Since then, she has worked with many major international orchestras in the world’s most famous concert halls and has performed with conductors such as Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Gustavo Dudamel, Lorin Maazel, Neville Marriner, Zubin Mehta, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Sir Antonio Pappano, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Yuri Temirkanov, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Pinchas Zukerman. She received one of the most prestigious awards in the international classical music scene when Musical America named her »Artist of the Year 2017.« »Through playing, I get to know my repertoire better,« explains Yuja Wang. »I have to perform to feel alive. It’s different every time, it’s very organic.« The spontaneity and intensity of her playing are reflected in Yuja Wang’s discography on Deutsche Grammophon. In January 2009, she signed an exclusive contract with the yellow label, for which she has since recorded a number of successful albums. After the release of her first solo recording, Sonatas & Etudes (April 2009), Gramophone magazine named her »Young Artist of the Year.« For her 2010 album Transformation, a carefully curated solo program featuring works by Brahms, Ravel, Scarlatti, and Stravinsky, she received the Echo Award for »Young Artist of the Year.« Her 2011 recording of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and his Paganini Rhapsody with Claudio Abbado and the Gustav Mahler Chamber Orchestra was nominated for a Grammy as »Best Classical Instrumental Solo.« Fantasia, released in 2012, offered a collection of encore pieces by Albéniz, Bach, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Saint-Saëns, Scriabin, and others. This was followed by live recordings of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 3 with Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra. The 2015 album Yuja Wang: Ravel with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich and Lionel Bringuier paired Ravel’s two piano concertos with Fauré’s Ballade. The live-recorded Berlin Recital (2018) explored the expressive worlds of solo works by Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Scriabin, and Ligeti. The album was awarded Best Instrumental Recording of the Year by Gramophone. Yuja Wang’s live world premiere recording of John Adams’ Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes? with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel was released in 2020. Wang’s interpretation of this new piano concerto – a commissioned work dedicated to her by the orchestra – won the Opus Klassik in 2021 for »Concert Recording of the Year/Piano.« The following year, the pianist released her first »Super-Trio« album with her colleagues Gautier Capuçon and Andreas Ottensamer; the program featured seminal works by Rachmaninoff and Brahms. Her latest album, The American Project, is due out in March 2023. It features the world premiere recording of a major new piano concerto written for her by Teddy Abrams. Recorded with the Louisville Orchestra under the direction of its music director Abrams, the album also includes Michael Tilson Thomas’ improvisational You Come Here Often?. A particular highlight of Wang’s 2022/23 season so far was the world premiere of Magnus Lindberg’s Piano Concerto No. 3 at Davies Symphony Hall with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and Esa-Pekka Salonen last October. The work was tailor-made for her, and both the premiere and subsequent performances in Toronto and New York received enthusiastic critical acclaim: a review of a New York performance by Bachtrack praised her »ability to give a poetic character even to passages that many pianists would probably find simply too technically difficult.« As part of the celebrations for Rachmaninoff’s 150th birthday, she performed all four of the composer’s piano concertos over two evenings twice (January 26 & 27 and February 4 & 5) at the Kimmel Center with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin; the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini was also included in all four events. In between, the same musicians were heard on January 28 at Carnegie Hall in an absolutely unique concert featuring all five works. This musical marathon also thrilled critics: The New York Times found Wang’s performances »simply overwhelming.« In February, the pianist traveled to Los Angeles to perform the same repertoire in a series of concerts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel at their Rachmaninoff Festival – these performances were filmed by DG and will be streamed on STAGE+ on April 1, 2023. Yuja Wang’s upcoming engagements include Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and Salonen in Paris, Luxembourg, and Hamburg (March); Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich and Paavo Järvi in Zurich (also March); and further performances of the Lindberg Concerto with various orchestras and conductors in Paris, Aix-en-Provence, Lyon, Hamburg, Rome, London, and Brighton (April and May). 3/2023