10.17.2007

The excellent Yuja Wang

Q: Some feel there is no need to record classical music any more, that it’s all been done before. What do you tell them?

Yuja Wang: Stop reading the book, it has been read before... or stop going to the same restaurant, you've eaten there before...the dish might be the same, but the chef is different, even with a same chef, his dish is his personal creation at the moment, it can never reproduce the same again. Same with recordings, each artist is not just playing what is on the score, but brings his personal view and experience into it that is unique and inimitable.

Last night we saw pianist Yuja Wang play Grieg 's Piano Concerto in A minor with the NAC orchestra. Here she plays Arcadi Volodos' arrangement of Mozart's Turkish March (Rondo Alla Turca) from the Piano Sonata in A Major K331, third movement. In it Volodos "paraphrased the movement to produce a seemingly impossible task of playing a melody and a counter melody with his right hand, and frightfully large chords and intricate passages with his left" [link]. Enjoy.



Yuja Wang's given name in Chinese characters is 羽佳 (pronounced Yǔjiā) meaning 羽 (yǔ) feather, 佳 (jiā) excellent.

1 comment:

Brenda Pearson said...

Really just utterly fantastic that fingers can move like that and still produced melody. One hell of a Turkish March!! Maestro Volodos is to be congratulated on producing this, and Mistress Wang is to be congratulated upon completing the piece with fingers intact!