Rachmaninov / Prokofiev Piano Concerto Yuja Wang

• Piano Concerto No.3 In D Minor, Op.30
• 11. Allegro ma non tanto15:50
• 22. Intermezzo (Adagio)10:38
• 33. Finale (Alla breve)14:20
• Piano Concerto No.2 In G Minor, Op.16
• 41. Andantino11:02
• 52. Scherzo (Vivace)02:22
• 63. Intermezzo (Allegro moderato)06:35
• 74. Finale (Allegro tempestoso)11:08
• Total Runtime01:11:55

Info for Rachmaninov / Prokofiev Piano Concerto

The Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, now the international flagship of Venezuela’s transformative network of music schools and youth orchestras known as El Sistema, has assembled in the concert hall of its Centro de Acción Social por la Música. Here Yuja Wang, the young Chinese virtuoso, has taken on a challenge substantial enough to make any pianist flinch. She is performing in one concert two of the most demanding piano concertos in the repertoire: Prokofiev’s second and Rachmaninov’s third.

On the podium is Venezuela’s dynamic superstar conductor Gustavo Dudamel; and the orchestra, made up of young players mainly in their 20s, is ready to respond with all their habitual vitality, in one of the concerts that are celebrating the 38th anniversary of El Sistema’s founding.

Making her first visit to Caracas, Wang declares herself enchanted by the place and the people. “It’s so adorable, lovable and warm – and I don’t just mean the weather,” she says. “Everything feels very spontaneous and that totally fits with my temperament.” She and Dudamel, well aware of each other as musicians before they ever met, had hoped to work together some day; and according to Dudamel the opportunity arrived sooner than expected. “It came about as if by magic,” he declares. “Our schedules looked really full – but I was in Los Angeles at the Hollywood Bowl and they said, ‘We have a soloist you might be interested in ...’” And so, in summer 2012, Dudamel conducted Wang in Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1. “Now, just a few months later, here she is, working with us in Caracas.”

Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto is less popular than his third, which presents perhaps a greater challenge to the soloist, particularly in the long and ferociously complex first-movement cadenza. This highly concentrated, four-movement work occupies a dark sphere in its composer’s psyche: Prokofiev wrote it in 1912–13 in memory of a friend from the St Petersburg Conservatory, Maximilian Schmidthof, who had taken his own life. The original score was destroyed in a fire after the Russian Revolution of 1917: Prokofiev subsequently redrafted it, and gave the new version’s première himself in 1924.

“It’s very powerful emotionally,” says Wang. “The piece is really demanding for both me and the orchestra. But I love playing it because there’s so much character and so much colour. There are qualities that are unique to this concerto: sinister, sarcastic, abstract ideas that can come off only when we’re playing absolutely together.” Dudamel adds: “For us, it’s also a big technical challenge – and it’s an amazing piece, very compact and very well constructed.”

Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 is the longest, most ambitious and most notoriously complex in technical terms of his works for piano and orchestra. It was written just three years before the Prokofiev concerto, in 1909, yet its romanticism seems to breathe the air of the 19th century rather than the 20th, to which Prokofiev’s so evidently belongs.

“This of course is one of the most famous of all piano concertos,” says Dudamel, “and the important thing is to have a soloist who really connects with the orchestra. It can sometimes be a piece in which the pianist feels inspired in the moment, does his or her own thing and the orchestra has to follow – but Yuja has a wonderful quality in that she listens to us all the time. We connect as if we were playing chamber music.”

Wang’s accounts of the work around the world have been praised in no uncertain terms, with the San Francisco Chronicle, for one, noting “the depth and imagination she brought to the entire score, and the way she made the piece’s virtuosic angle just one part of its purpose”.

The pianist herself remarks that one of this concerto’s greatest challenges for the soloist is how to maintain the narrative line across the music’s substantial span. “It’s a long story, very Russian,” she says, “and full of every kind of emotion. It’s been recorded many times, but I’m happy that this recording captures the energy levels of our live performance. I think it’s a little explosive, but controlled and very communicative.”

Wang first heard the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, New York, a few years ago, and she recalls being bowled over by the energy, enthusiasm and power of its young players. “I think it was the most exciting concert I’ve been to,” she says. “It made people feel like they’re living in another world. And that’s what music should do to people, it’s the essence of music.”

Working with them did not disappoint: “They are all around my own age, which doesn’t happen often, and what has really struck me is how responsive they are. In the rehearsals I found that if I asked them to do something in the music, they’d not only do it at once, but they’d do it about a thousand times better than I’d imagined. I could have gone on rehearsing for hours and hours because I was having so much fun.”

Dudamel feels that this is a landmark recording for the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra: “It is the first album we’ve recorded with a soloist,” he says, “and that’s something important, because previously the orchestra has always recorded symphonic music – Mahler, Beethoven, Stravinsky ... We were waiting to record with a soloist who could connect with us in this way. Yuja is very young and very talented, we’re of the same generation and together we are all building a new generation of musicians and audiences. It’s great that we are recording with her in Simón Bolívar Hall in our centre here in Caracas.” (Jessica Duchen)

„Powerful piano classics . . . The incandescent young Chinese pianist Yuja Wang teams up with the equally explosive Gustavo Dudamel . . . [a] superb debut collaboration.“ (Christian Science Monitor)

„It is difficult to believe that her diminutive body could have such incredible power and stamina, all obvious from these knock-out performances of two of the most difficult concertos in the repertory. The millions of notes are dispatched with the greatest virtuosity, yet no lack of sensitivity. This is an exciting Rachmaninoff Third that doesn't linger excessively . . . Wang also commands the mighty Prokofiev Concerto, and her performance is right at the top . . . Wang has the advantage of Dudamel's perfect accompaniment, and what a pleasure it is to hear the rich sounds of the large Venezuelan orchestra playing with virtuosity to match the soloist. Another plus is audio quality of these live recordings . . . This is a terrific recording in every way!“ (R.E.B., Classicalcdreview.com)

Yuja Wang, piano
Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela
Gustavo Dudamel, conductor

Yuja Wang
Whenever Yuja Wang makes music, her soul opens to reveal depths of understanding. Her pianism blends abundant power with exquisite lightness, scintillating dexterity with heart-melting lyricism, and crystal clarity with transcendent beauty, qualities combined in a mesmerizing process of artistic alchemy. She is widely recognized as one of the most important artists of her generation, both for her supreme musicianship and her ability to captivate audiences of all ages. “Hers is a nonchalant, brilliant keyboard virtuosity that would have made both Prokofiev (who was a great pianist) and even the fabled Horowitz jealous,” observed the Los Angeles Times in its review of the 28-year-old pianist’s recent appearance at the Hollywood Bowl.

Yuja Wang’s prodigious virtuosity and technical control command critical appreciation; she is also regularly praised for the clarity of her musical insight, the freshness of her interpretations and charismatic power of her stage presence. She believes that technique should never be an end in itself, that it should always serve the cause of emotional expression and musical interpretation. Above all she is devoted to cultivating and communicating her complete affinity with the works in her broad repertoire. “Virtuosic scores are not necessarily about a flashy style”, declares Wang. “When I am excited about a piece, and the more it connects to my personality, the better I can play it and grip the audience.”

Yuja Wang was born into a musical family in Beijing on 10 February 1987. She received her first piano lessons at the age of six and made rapid progress after she became a student at the Beijing Conservatory. Young Yuja’s musical and personal development gathered momentum in 1999 when she moved to Canada to join the Morningside Music summer programme at Calgary’s Mount Royal College; she went on to become the youngest ever student at Mount Royal Conservatory. In 2002 she won the Aspen Music Festival’s concerto competition; she also enrolled to study with the distinguished concert pianist and teacher Gary Graffman at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Graffman recalls that he was struck by the “intelligence and good taste” of the 15-year-old’s audition performances.

By the time Wang graduated from the Curtis Institute in May 2008, her professional career was already underway. She attracted media attention in Canada in 2005 following her sensational debut with the National Arts Centre Orchestra, prompting one newspaper to headline its review, “A star is born”. Her international breakthrough came in March 2007, when she replaced Martha Argerich at short notice as soloist in Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No.1 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The pianist’s meteoric rise since has taken place in company with many of the world’s leading orchestras and at the most prestigious concert venues. She has given concerto performances with such prominent conductors as Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Gustavo Dudamel, Charles Dutoit, Valery Gergiev, Lorin Maazel, Sir Neville Marriner, Zubin Mehta, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Sir Antonio Pappano, Yuri Temirkanov, Michael Tilson Thomas and Pinchas Zukerman.

“I have always performed,” observes Yuja Wang. “I get to know my repertoire by doing. I need to perform to feel alive. Every time it’s different, it’s organic.” The spontaneity and vision of the pianist’s playing is reflected in her acclaimed discography for Deutsche Grammophon. Since signing an exclusive contract with the yellow label in January 2009, she has recorded a series of landmark albums. Following the release in 2009 of Sonatas & Etudes, her solo debut recording, Gramophone named her “Young Artist of the Year”. Wang received the Echo Award as “Young Artist of the Year” for her 2010 album, Transformation, a carefully constructed solo programme featuring Brahms, Ravel, Scarlatti and Stravinsky. Her 2011 release of Rachmaninov’s Second Concerto and “Paganini Rhapsody” with Claudio Abbado and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, was nominated for a Grammy® as “Best Classical Instrumental Solo”. Fantasia, released in 2012, offers a collection of encore pieces by Albéniz, Bach, Chopin, Rachmaninov, Saint-Saëns, Scriabin and others. This was followed by a live recording of Prokofiev’s Concerto No. 2 and Rachmaninov’s Concerto No. 3 with Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra. Her latest Deutsche Grammophon recording, Yuja Wang: Ravel, with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich and Lionel Bringuier, is set for release in October 2015.

In 2011 Wang made her solo recital debut at Carnegie Hall. In its review, the New York Times commended her “magisterial and dazzling performance” of Liszt’s monumental Sonata in B minor, among the greatest of all nineteenth-century piano pieces. She has returned to Carnegie Hall every season since, attracting capacity audiences and prompting standing ovations at each performance. Recent career milestones include an extensive tour of Japan in 2013, complete with her recital debut at Tokyo’s Suntory Hall; an “Artist Portrait” series with the London Symphony Orchestra in 2013-14; and her concerto debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker in May 2015. As a chamber musician Wang has developed partnerships with several other leading artists, notably with Leonidas Kavakos, with whom she has toured and recorded the complete violin sonatas of Brahms.

Yuja Wang launches her 2015-16 season in partnership with the San Francisco Symphony and Tilson Thomas as part of the orchestra’s “European Festivals Tour”, performing works by Bartók and Beethoven at the BBC Proms, the Edinburgh, Rheingau, Lucerne, and Enescu festivals, and in Amsterdam, Luxembourg, and Paris. She will also perform the complete cycle of Brahms’s violin sonatas with Kavakos at the Edinburgh International Festival and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No.2 on an Asia tour with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Gustavo Gimeno. Other highlights of 2015-16 include Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony with the New York Philharmonic and Esa-Pekka Salonen, and with the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra under Dudamel, in Caracas and throughout Europe. In February 2016 Wang is set to join Mikhail Pletnev and the Russian National Orchestra to perform Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.9 “Jeunehomme” and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No.2 during the orchestra’s twenty-fifth anniversary tour to the United States. She will also perform Mozart’s “Jeunehomme” in Munich and Paris for her debut with the Wiener Philharmoniker, given under the direction of Valery Gergiev.

Booklet for Rachmaninov / Prokofiev Piano Concerto