YUJA WANG'S
REMARKABLE PIANISTIC TRIPLE PLAY
By Paul Hertelendy
artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music
and dance
Week of June 18-25, 2010
Vol. 12, No. 116
Disappointments arising over the San Francisco
Symphony’s dropping
its scheduled Berlioz “Romeo and Juliet” to close its season had its
compensation
the week before with a brilliantly conceived program built around the
boiling
creative world that was Paris around 1913-29, capped with “The Rite of
Spring.”
The musical
cornucopia featured seemingly one of the most fragile,
petite, slender and youthful of pianists in three of the five works.
Beijing-born
Yuja Wang, 23, may be fragile, petite, slender and youthful, but she is
huge
and strong interpreting the Ravel Left-Hand Piano Concerto, bringing
down the
house at Davies Hall June 17. The orchestra under Michael TIlson Tilson
showed little
Gallic impetuousness or spontaneity. But Wang held up her end
effectively,
slicing through all the fast runs, heavy chords, whole-tone scales, and
varied otherworldly
ethereal stylings. She made this tour de force sing eloquently.
Originally
written for a one-armed victim of World War One
injuries, it is a masterful achievement, taking full advantage of the
thumb in
its powerful up-scale lead position. The piece begins quite
mysteriously in the
orchestral underworld (lower depths of pitch), giving contrabassoonist
Steven
Braunstein a rare solo place in the spotlight.
The musical
rebellions of the 1920s are epitomized by
Stravinsky’s Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra, which led to one of the
important Balanchine-Stravinsky ballet collaborations. It’s angular,
quirky and
at times syncopated, with sharp accents and slow-fast contrasts,
culminating in
a make-believe vision of a wild flight of ballet bodies, at one point
with an
odd trio of trumpet, violin and piano (Ms. Wang). It’s just 17 tightly
packed
minutes, but with enough notes to last much longer for any lesser
composer.
Francis
Poulenc’s Sonata for Piano Four Hands likewise tried
to squeeze the maximum into the minimum time of five minutes. In his
own
innovative, fashionable way, Poulenc strove toward a symphonic
hyperintensity,
with the upper pianist (MTT’s surprise gig) reaching down over the
partner’s
hands to play massive bass chords in a thumping, percussive mode. It’s
an
out-and-out novelty piece, one almost never heard.
Equally
unfamiliar was Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasilieras
No. 9 in a strings-only version, utilizing a prelude-&-fugue format
reminiscent of Bach. The SFS strings were a treat for the ears when
heard June
17.
Stravinsky's
epic “The Rite of
Spring” required a greatly augmented orchestra,
with 15 brass players, 25 more for woodwinds-horns, six percussion, and
two
each of contrabassoon, timpani, tubas, and Wagner (tenor) tubas. It was
a
mighty noise, in 1913 causing sonic hangovers, today causing giddiness
and
intoxication. How even the wildest sounds win acceptance with the
course of
time! Its Paris
premiere accompanying dance set off a riot; today it sets off ovations
in a way
like no other atonal collection of unbridled clangors. It was the total
break
with the past, the breaking of the champagne for the launching of the
unorthodox
vessel that was 20th-century creativity. What’s particularly
surprising is that most of our orchestral composers today write in a
far more
conventional mode, with more conventional harmonies. Perhaps the
rebellion is
over for good?
Ed.
note: Apologies to our readers for the delay in filing this review,
caused by computer hardware problems.
San Francisco Symphony with Yuja Wang,
piano, Davies Hall,
S.F., through June 19. For info: (415) 864-6000, or go online.
©Paul Hertelendy 2010
#
Paul Hertelendy has been
covering
the dance and modern-music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area with
relish
-- and a certain amount of salsa -- for years.
These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never
weakly)
will focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with
forays
into books (by authors of the region), theater and recordings by local
artists as well.
#
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