Yuja Wang

Yuja Wang
Receiving 2011 Echo Klassik award, October 2, 2011, Berlin
Background information
Native name	王羽佳
Birth name	Wang Yuja
Born	(1987-02-10) February 10, 1987 Beijing
Genres	Classical Music
Occupations	Musician
Instruments	Piano

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 her piano studies at age six.^[3] She entered Beijing's Central Conservatory of Music at age seven and studied there for three years. At age 11, Wang was accepted as the youngest student in the Morningside Music Bridge International Music Festival at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Canada.^[6]

Starting at age 15, she studied for five years with Gary Graffman at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and graduated in May 2008. Graffman said that Wang's technique impressed 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 Zurich, 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 March 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 the Mendelssohn 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]

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 Berlin Staatskapelle, China Philharmonic, Filarmonica della Scala, 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

In January 2009, Wang signed an exclusive recording contract for five discs with Deutsche Grammophon.^[19] She released her first CD, Sonatas & Etudes in 2009, followed by Transformation in 2010; Rachmaninov in 2011;^[20] and Fantasia in 2012.^[21]

In addition, EuroArts released a DVD on which she performs Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Major, with Abbado conducting.^[22]

Yuya 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,^[23][24][25] there is little information available about it.

Reviews

Critically acclaimed as a concert pianist, 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.^[26]

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."^[27]

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.^[28]

Awards

• 2006: Gilmore Young Artist Award^[9]
• 2009: Gramophone Classic FM's Young Artist of the Year ^[8]
• 2010: Avery Fisher Career Grant Recipient^[29]
• 2011: Echo Klassik Young Artist of the Year^[30]

Personal life

Wang resides in New York City but travels worldwide performing concerts. Wang has said that had she not had a career as a pianist, she may have become a choreographer or a clothing designer.^[3] Considered "fashionable and outspoken", Wang has quoted in her Twitter feed both Mahler ("Tradition is tending the flame, it's not worshiping the ashes") and Coco Chanel ("A girl should always be two things: classy and fabulous.")^[3]

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Yuja Wang.

• Official website
• Yuja Wang on Twitter
• Yuja Wang on Facebook
• Yuja Wang at AllMusic
• Profile of Yuja Wang on Opus3 Artists site
• Rondo a la Turca on YouTube, Volodos transcription