Yuja Wang

Yuja Wang
Portrait of Yuja Wang
Background information
Native name 王羽佳
Birth name Wang Yuja
Born (1987-02-10) February 10, 1987
Beijing, China
Genres Classical
Occupation(s) Pianist
Instruments Piano
Website www.yujawang.com
This is a Chinese name; the family name is Wang (王).

Yuja Wang (Chinese: 王羽佳; pinyin: Wáng Yǔjiā;[1] born February 10, 1987)[2] is a Chinese classical pianist. She was born in Beijing, began studying piano there at age six, and went on to study at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing.[3] By the age of 21 she was already an internationally recognized concert pianist, giving recitals around the world.[4] She has a recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon.

Early life

Wang comes from a musical family. Her mother, Zhai Jieming, is a dancer and her father, Wang Jianguo, is a percussionist. Both live in Beijing.[5]

Wang began studying piano at age 6.[3] At age 7, she began three years' study at Beijing's Central Conservatory of Music. At 11, Wang entered the Morningside Music Bridge International Music Festival (at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta, Calgary, as the festival's youngest student.[6]

At age 15, Wang entered the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where studied for five years with Gary Graffman and graduated in 2008. Graffman said that Wang's technique impressed him during her audition, but "it was the intelligence and good taste" of her interpretations that distinguished her.[5]

Career

Early career

In 1998, Wang won 3rd prize in the Ettlingen International Competition for Young Pianists, in Ettlingen, Germany. In 2001, she won Third Prize and Special Jury Prize (awarded to an especially superior finalist of less than 20 years in age, prize money of 500,000 Japanese Yen) in the Piano Section at the First Sendai International Music Competition in Sendai, Japan.[7]

In 2002, Wang won the Aspen Music Festival's concerto competition.[8]

In 2003, Wang made her European debut with the Tonhalle Orchestra in Zürich, Switzerland, playing Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 under the baton of David Zinman. She made her North American debut in Ottawa in the 2005/06 season, replacing Radu Lupu performing the Beethoven concerto with Pinchas Zukerman conducting.

On September 11, 2005, Wang was named a 2006 biennial Gilmore Young Artist award winner, given to the most promising pianists age 21 and younger. As part of the award, she received $15,000, appeared at Gilmore Festival concerts, and had a new piano work commissioned for her.[9]

In 2006, Wang made her New York Philharmonic debut at the Bravo! Vail Music Festival. The following season, she performed with the orchestra under Lorin Maazel during the Philharmonic's tour of Japan and Korea.[10]

In March 2007, Wang's breakthrough came when she replaced Martha Argerich in concerts held in Boston.[11][12] Argerich had cancelled her appearances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on four subscription concerts from March 8 to 13.[11] Wang performed Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 with Charles Dutoit conducting.

Select appearances

In 2008, Wang toured the U.S. with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields led by Sir Neville Marriner. In 2009, she performed as a soloist with the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, which was led by Michael Tilson Thomas at Carnegie Hall. Wang performed with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra conducted by Claudio Abbado in Beijing, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Spain and in London, and the Hong Kong Philharmonic.[10]

In 2009, Wang performed and recorded Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto in G Minor with Kurt Masur at the Verbier Festival.[13] Her performance of Flight of the Bumblebee is featured on the Verbier Festival Highlights DVD from 2008. Wang's Bumblebee video has been viewed more than 3 million times on YouTube.[14]

In 2012, Wang toured with the Israel Philharmonic and conductor Zubin Mehta in Israel and the U.S., with a performance at Carnegie Hall in New York in September.[15]

Wang toured Asia in November 2012 with the San Francisco Symphony and its conductor Michael Tilson Thomas.[16]

In February 2013, Wang performed and recorded Prokofiev's Concerto No. 2 and Rachmaninoff's Concerto No. 3 with Conductor Gustavo Dudamel and the Venezuelan Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar.[17]

Also in 2013, Wang's recital tour of Japan culminated with her recital debut at Tokyo's Suntory Hall.[18]

Wang made her Berlin Philharmonic debut in May 2015, performing Sergei Prokofiev's 2nd Piano Concerto with Conductor Paavo Järvi. The performance was broadcast live through the orchestra's Digital Concert Hall.[19]

Orchestras and performances

As of 2013, Wang has performed with many orchestras, including Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington, in the U.S. Internationally, she has performed with the Staatskapelle Berlin, China Philharmonic, Filarmonica della Scala, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Orquesta Nacional España, Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar, the NHK Symphony in Tokyo, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Orchestra Mozart and Santa Cecilia.[15]

Discography

Main article: Yuja Wang discography

In January 2009, Wang signed a recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon.[20] She released her first CD, Sonatas & Etudes in 2009, followed by Transformation in 2010; Rachmaninov in 2011;[21] and Fantasia in 2012.[22]

In addition, EuroArts released a DVD on which she performs Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Major, with Abbado conducting.[23]

Yuja Wang performed the Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra under Gustavo Dudamel in Caracas, Venezuela, in February 2013. A recording of this performance was released in December 2013 on Deutsche Grammophon. Ms Wang is scheduled to perform the Piano Concerto in Boston in March 2014.

Although there are reports Wang released a debut CD in 1995,[24][25][26] there is little information available about it.

Reviews

External images
Wang at the Hollywood Bowl, 2011

Wang has received attention as much for her eye-catching outfits and glamorous stage presence as for her piano playing. In a much-quoted 2011 review of a concert at the Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles Times classical music critic Mark Swed wrote:

But it was Yuja Wang's orange dress for which Tuesday night is likely to remembered ... Her dress Tuesday was so short and tight that had there been any less of it, the Bowl might have been forced to restrict admission to any music lover under 18 not accompanied by an adult. Had her heels been any higher, walking, to say nothing of her sensitive pedaling, would have been unfeasible[27]

Swed was widely criticised for this aspect of his review.[28]

In a review of Wang's 2011 Carnegie Hall debut, The New York Times wrote:

From the opening piece, an early Scriabin prelude, Ms. Wang played this Chopinesque music, all rippling left-hand figures and dreamy melodic lines, with a delicacy, poetic grace and attention to inner musical details that commanded respect. After intermission she offered a rhapsodic, uncommonly nuanced account of the formidable Liszt Sonata in B minor. But the most revealing performance came in Prokofiev's Piano Sonata No. 6 in A. Completed in 1940, this nearly 30-minute work channels some barbaric, propulsive, harmonically brittle outbursts into a formal four-movement sonata structure. In most readings, intriguing tension results from hearing music of such aggressive modernism reined in by Neo-Classical constraints. Ms. Wang reconciled these conflicting elements through a performance of impressive clarity and detail.[29]

In June 2012, the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that Wang is "quite simply, the most dazzlingly, uncannily gifted pianist in the concert world today, and there's nothing left to do but sit back, listen and marvel at her artistry."[30]

From a May 2013 Carnegie Hall concert, The New York Times reported that Wang's "fortissimos were fearsome, but so, in a quieter way, were the longing melodic lines of the first movement of Rachmaninoff's Sonata No. 2." The reviewer added:

The liquidity of her phrasing in the second movement of Scriabin's Sonata No. 2 eerily evoked the sound of woodwinds. In that composer's Sonata No. 6 she juxtaposed colors granitic and gauzy to eerily brilliant effect before closing the written program with a rabid rendition of the one-piano version of "La valse", accentuating the sickliness of Ravel's distorted waltzes.[31]

Awards

References

  1. ↑ "Piano". Yuja Wang. Retrieved 2012-11-30.
  2. ↑ Kosman, Joshua (December 28, 2008). "Best classical music of 2008". The San Francisco Chronicle.
  3. 1 2 Jepson, Barbara (October 18, 2011). "The Fast and the Serious". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  4. ↑ "Yuja Wang – Biography". AllMusic. Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  5. 1 2 Schweitzer, Vivien (April 6, 2012). "Talented, Eye-Catching, Unapologetic". The New York Times. Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  6. ↑ Wang, Yuja (June 9, 2010). Concert Pianist Yuja Wang Talks About the Mount Royal Conservatory. Retrieved April 22, 2016.
  7. ↑ "1st SIMC Piano Section May 26 – June 9, 2001". Sendai International Music Competition for Violin & Piano. Retrieved December 4, 2012.
  8. 1 2 "Young Artist of the Year Award – Yuja Wang". Gramophone. Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  9. 1 2 "Gilmore Young Artist Award". The Gilmore. Retrieved December 4, 2012.
  10. 1 2 "Yuja Wang – About". About. YujaWang.com. Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  11. 1 2 "News: Martha Argerich Cancels This Week's Appearances with Boston Symphony". PlaybillArts. March 5, 2007. Retrieved 2012-11-30.
  12. ↑ Cheadle, James. "Taking Flight" (PDF). BBC Music. Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  13. ↑ "Mendelssohn in Verbier". EuroArts. Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  14. ↑ "Yuja Wang plays the Flight of the Bumble-Bee (Vol du Bourdon)". YouTube. Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  15. 1 2 "Yuja Wang, pianist". Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  16. ↑ "Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony Perform Six-City, 10-Concert Asian Tour in November" (PDF). San Francisco Symphony. Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  17. ↑ "Yuja Wang grabo con Deutsche Grammophon en Caracas". Venezuela Sinfonica. Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  18. ↑ "Yuja Wang". Carnegie Hall. Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  19. ↑ "Yuja Wang debuts with the Berliner Philharmoniker". Berliner Philharmoniker. Retrieved May 16, 2015.
  20. ↑ Archived January 30, 2009, at the Wayback Machine.
  21. ↑ "Yuja Wang: Recordings". Yuja Wang. Retrieved February 23, 2012.
  22. ↑ "Yuja Wang: Fantasia". Deutsche Grammophon. Retrieved February 23, 2012.
  23. ↑ "Abbado Conducts Mahler No. 1 & Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3". EuroArts. Retrieved July 30, 2010.
  24. ↑ "Rising star Yuja Wang steps in for pianist Radu Lupu who has been obliged to cancel his Feb. 8–9 NAC Orchestra concerts with Pinchas Zukerman for medical reasons". Canada's National Arts Centre. January 19, 2005. Retrieved July 30, 2010. She released her debut CD in 1995...
  25. ↑ "China Philharmonic with Yuja Wang". Strathmore. Retrieved July 30, 2010. Yuja Wang's debut CD was released in 1995.
  26. ↑ "The young Chinese pianist talks with Patrick P.L. Lam". Musicweb International. Retrieved November 3, 2009. Wang released her very début CD in 1995.
  27. ↑ Review by Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times, 3 August 2011
  28. ↑ "Which offends? Her short dress or critic’s narrow view?" by Anne Midgette, The Washington Post, August 12, 2011
  29. ↑ Tommasini, Anthony (October 21, 2011). "Flaunting Virtuosity (and More)". The New York Times. Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  30. ↑ Kosman, Joshua (June 19, 2012). "S.F. Symphony review: Wang's awesome Rachmaninoff". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  31. ↑ Woolfe, Zachary (May 17, 2013). "Restrained, Then Madly Lyrical: The Pianist as Spring Mechanism". The New York Times. Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  32. ↑ "Avery Fisher Career Grants". Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Retrieved June 11, 2013.
  33. ↑ "Echo Klassik-Sonderpreise für Nachwuchsförderung". Musik Heute. Retrieved June 11, 2013.

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