United States Tanglewood Pageant 2024 [4]: Yuja Wang (piano). Ozawa Corridor, Lenox, 17.7.2024. (CSa)

Shostakovich – Prelude and Fugue, Op.87, No.2; Prelude, Op.34, No.12; Prelude, Op.34, No.10; Prelude, Op.87, No.8; Prelude, Op.34, No.24; Prelude, Op.34, No.5; Prelude, Op.34, No.16; Prelude and Fugue, Op.87, No.15
Barber – Piano Sonata in E-flat minor, Op.26
Chopin – The 4 Ballades: No.1 in G minor, Op.23; No.2 in F, Op.38; No.3 in A-flat, Op.47; No.4 in F minor, Op. 52

Many people have attended good concert events, recitals and opera productions over time and sometimes some nice ones. There are, nevertheless, few events when a musical occasion is so excellent that it stays etched indelibly within the reminiscence. I nonetheless recall an historic sequence of Anglo-Soviet musical exchanges organised by the late impresario Victor Hochhauser on the peak of the Chilly Warfare. I used to be simply 12 years outdated when my father took me to the Royal Pageant Corridor to listen to David Oistrakh, Mstislav Rostropovich and Sviatoslav Richter. Or, some seven years later, taking myself to the identical venue to witness a superb efficiency of The Ceremony of Spring brilliantly performed by the diminutive 88-year-old Stravinsky, who responded to a thunderous ovation and requires an encore by returning to the platform wearing an extended black overcoat. Or, in 2008, to see the good Daniel Barenboim play all 32 of Beethoven’s mature piano sonatas. These weren’t merely vital moments in musical historical past, however events the place one’s senses had been merely overwhelmed by the supreme artistry on show.

I skilled one thing comparable on this event at a surprising recital of Shostakovich, Barber and Chopin in Ozawa Corridor, Tanglewood, by the preternaturally gifted US/Chinese language pianist Yuja Wang. Born in Beijing 37 years in the past to a percussionist father and a ballerina mom, Yuja studied piano on the Beijing Central Conservatory earlier than receiving additional coaching in Canada and on the Curtis Institute of Music underneath the American live performance pianist Gary Graffman. Glamorously attired in one in all her autograph sparking bodycon attire and a pair of death-defying five-inch heels, she clopped purposely in the direction of the piano to applause and cheers usually reserved for American Idol contestants. As soon as seated on the keyboard, she limbered her shoulders, rolled her head, straightened her again (a ballet dancer’s posture maybe inherited from her mom), and arms outstretched, started to play. From this level the glitter was confined to the music. There was nothing showy or affected about her efficiency model. Quite the opposite, as soon as on the keyboard her dazzling method was executed with intense focus, financial system and style.

The recital started with a collection of six of Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and two Preludes and Fugues. Written between December 1932 and March 1933, when he was underneath official investigation by the Soviet sensors, these works replicate the composer’s wry, sardonic humour, dissident playfulness and explosive anger. Alternating passages of nice delicacy and percussive rage, and taking part in with the utmost readability, Wang completely captured their advanced emotional vary.

Subsequent got here the not often carried out Piano Sonata in E-flat minor by Samuel Barber. These acquainted with his earlier String Quartet Op.11, which includes his beguiling Adagio, will discover the composition in E flat an untypically dissonant work. It was, as Robert Kirzinger’s useful programme observe knowledgeable us, commissioned in 1947 by Irving Berlin and Richard Rodgers and written with Vladimir Horowitz in thoughts. Wang attacked the primary two actions with the fiery percussive pressure which likely her father would have appreciated. In stark distinction, she introduced a restrained calm to the third motion Adagio. A terse Scherzo offered the introduction to a last fugue – thrilling, impulsive, edgy – however all the time rigorously managed.

The second half of the recital was devoted to Chopin’s 4 Ballades. These are grand Romantic works filled with emotional extremes. In line with the good Chopin interpreter Leif Ove Andsnes, ‘These taking part in [them] need to steadiness a number of voices, discover the place to breath, but in addition the place to keep up momentum’.  In all these respects, Wang’s taking part in was peerless. Each bit was fantastically articulated with dizzying passages of emotional fervour suffused with melancholy and counterpoised with gossamer lightness of contact. Hers was a efficiency that thrilled the senses and touched the soul.

Breathtaking virtuosity, emotional sensitivity and acute musical intelligence will not be the one qualities that Wang brings to the live performance platform. She can be beneficiant to a fault. On this event, at least 5 encores rewarded the roaring applause. Piano Examine No.6 by Philip Glass got here first, adopted by a pyrotechnical account of the Scherzo from Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique, transcribed by Samuil Feinberg. Then, one other Scherzo extracted from Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Evening’s Dream and performed right here with superior dexterity. Wang selected to finish her wide-ranging recital with a steamy transcription of Danzón No.2 by Arturo Màrquez and a riotous jazz-infused Toccatina by Nikolai Kapustin. Sadly however inevitably it introduced a unprecedented recital to an in depth and one which can stay perpetually within the reminiscence.

Chris Sallon