Yuja & Friend's Night Out Does Not Disappoint Fans or Critics
/By Truman C. Wang
3/3/2025
A lighthearted entr’acte in the midst of heavy Mahler programming. Superstar ‘badgirl’ pianist Yuja Wang this year tours with her, shall we say, a little more serious-minded Icelandic colleague Víkingur Ólafsson, an unlikely duo on paper, but surprisingly worked out well in recital. So well, in fact, that a second concert was added (on 2/25) due to popular demand. I attended the originally scheduled 2/26 concert.
A quick perusal of the program shows a large number of unfamiliar new works, but mercifully they were mostly short (no more than 2-3 minutes) and meditative in character: Berio's "Wasserklavier", Cage’s “Experiences No. 1”, Pärt's "Hymn to a Great City" showed the duo meshing naturally and intimately in a shimmering landscape of tender tones and emotions. Nancarrow's Study No. 6 (in Adès' ingenious arrangement) and John Adams' "Hallelujah Junction" heard the pair navigate the works’ labyrinthine of intricate rhythms: Yuja’s playful, percussive brilliance, held in check by Víkingur’s mature clarity of thought. She had an iPad score, he a paper score and a page turner. Two opposites, great chemistry.
In the master works – Schubert's F minor Fantasia, Rachmaninoff's "Symphonic Dances” – the piano duo melded their tones and phrases together as one musical instrument, matching even in the amounts of tonal weight and vibrato, which is no small feat. In the “Dances”, they displayed the grace, pace and swooning excitement of champion ballroom dancers.
Three encores – a Dvorak Slovanic Dance, a Brahms Hungarian Dance, and Brahms Intermezzo Op.118 No. 2 – were in turn passionate, brilliant, sweet. Last but not least, Yuja’s gimmicky wardrobe choices, I shall let the photos speak for themselves:
Truman C. Wang is Editor-in-Chief of Classical Voice, whose articles have appeared in the Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, other Southern California publications, as well as the Hawaiian Chinese Daily. He studied Integrative Biology and Music at U.C. Berkeley.