Tag Archives: Yuja Wang

Yuja Wang & Esa-Pekka Salonen: A Wonderful Concert

These two musical artists lit up Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, February 13. The program featured Debussy’s three works of Images pour orchestre, Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, and the SF premiere of Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Piano Concerto No. 1, Opus 45. Wang performed both concerti with power and her intimate knowledge of playing the piano.  This program appears four times; it demands strength and excellence. Maestro Salonen, leading the SF Symphony, provides all the necessities brilliantly. There are two more performances: Tonight, Saturday, Feb. 15, 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Feb. 16, 2:00. These are wonderful concerts with thrilling music and artists.

Esa-Pekka Salonen, Music Director, San Francisco Symphony

Debussy’s Images pour orchestre are three separate pieces that Debussy created from 1905-1912. They are presented in varying order. This program opened with Gigues from Images pour orchestre (1912)  followed by Rondes de printemps (1905). Ronde was the first part he created; it suggested the idea of the parts. The third part, Iberia, closed the whole program. Each piece is inspired by Debussy’s idea of three countries: England for Gigues, inspired in part by a folk song, “The Keel Row;” France for Ronde de printemps; Iberia for Spain. Gigues and Ronde were fascinating. Each is eight minutes. The title, Images, fits because Debussy was very taken by the French Impressionist painters. His work also is engaged in aural suggestions of Pierrot, the theater’s sad clown. The Images may recall characteristics of these countries, but these works are imaginative and circulate one’s experiences and memories. I would hear and see them again right now if I could.

Yuja Wang, pianist

The Piano Concerto in D major for the Left Hand, was composed by Maurice Ravel, 1929-30, specifically for Paul Wittgenstein. Ravel entered World War I hoping to be a pilot, but due to his age and health, he was a supply driver. Pianist Paul Wittgenstein had recently made his solo debut before the war. He had been “called up” by the Austro-Hungarian Army and scouted Russian positions. He was shot in his elbow; doctors amputated his right hand. While in the hospital, the Russians raided the hospital and took everyone there as a prisoner of war. He was sent on the long journey to Omsk, Siberia where there was a POW hospital. He began to try to re-train the fingers of his left hand by drawing a keyboard to drill his fingers. He was moved to a hotel that had an upright piano, but luck changed. He was moved to a horrible place in the gulag. It was so terrible that Dostoevsky made it the scene for his novel, The House of the Dead. Wittgestein was in a prisoner exchange that took him back to Vienna.

Maurice Ravel, composer (1875-1937)

Wittgestein commissioned Ravel for a Concerto, but Wittgenstein “had issues” about the finished piece. After lengthy disputes, Wittgen stein finally recognized Ravel had composed a great work. Yuja Wang played brilliantly. One could see the physical challenge of the music. Yuja Wang balanced herself by having her right hand hold on to the right side of the bench and also by grasping the piano’s top. The Concerto is very athletic for the pianist. Ravel said, “even a single hand can create layers of sound and both melody and accompaniment at the same time.” Ravel was a jazz fan, and this Concerto shows his understanding of Jazz sounds and rhythms. He said, “After a first part in {a} traditional style, a sudden change occurs and the jazz music begins. Only later does it become evident that this jazz music is really built on the same theme as the opening part.” Wittgenstein, realizing his good fortune to have this Concerto in his repertory, played it in concerts everywhere, including with the San Francisco Symphony, 1946. Watching Yuja Wang play this makes one realize the physicality needed to make music. She is ready for Olympic gold. Fascinating to watch, and listening to her playing in person is a great reward for the audience.

Einojuhani Rautavaara, composer (1928-2016)

Rautavaara was the most famous Finnish composer when he passed away relatively recently. He studied at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. He said that he was not a piano prodigy, but  “with no personal contact with music as yet, I painted ‘music’ on paper in watercolors.” He received a master’s degree from the Academy and Sibelius chose him to win the study grant honoring Sibelius’ 90th birthday. He used the grant to study with Roger Sessions and Aaron Copland, in 1955 and 1956. He continued studies at Julliard and in Europe. He was interested in all the serious music trends, including 12 tone serialism. He composed eight symphonies and forty other orchestral works. His Piano Concerto No. 1, Opus 45 (1969) opened his eyes to alternatives to the most fashionable styles. He leaned into neo-Romanticism in his own style. “I was disappointed…with the then fashionable ‘ascetic’ –and to my mind anemic –piano style, and i wanted in my concerto to restore the entire rich grandeur of the instrument, to write a concerto ‘in the grand style.'” Yuja Wang was the right person to present the grand style. The Concerto needs a strong technique and deep understanding of the music. There were many physical performance requirements. The pianist had to use her whole lower arm to make the sound of all those notes at the same time. Her hands had to jump over each other. It was a powerful Concerto with a powerful artist bringing it to an excited audience. Yuja Wang was cheered into encores: Etude No. 6, by Philip Glass. The audience went wild again. The second encore was Danzon No. 2, by Arturo Marquez. Ms Wang is a great personality in addition to a fabulous performer.

Music Director Salonen closed this wonderful program with SF Symphony playing Debussy’s third part of the Images pour orchestre, iberia. The impressionistic music wafted around the hall. It has Spain’s light, colors, an atmosphere of people dancing a sevillana in the town’s plaza. The music suggests visual experience in the music. The scent of a place Debussy had never seen surrounded us in his imagination.

Note: Quotations of Ravel are from Benjamin Pesetsky article SF Symphony program. Quotation from Rautavaara are from James M. Keller article in SF Symphony program.

 

 

 

 

AMAZING NIGHT AT THE SF SYMPHONY: ESA-PEKKA SALONEN, YUJA WANG, SF SYMPHONY, NEW CONCERTO BY MAGNUS LINDBERG…

The San Francisco Symphony presented an amazing evening of music, October 13, 2022. Esa Pekka Salonen, Music Director, still seems new since the pandemic separated him from his audience. Now that he and the SFS are back performing full seasons, the excitement of his leadership and creativity is nearly tangible in Davies Symphony Hall. The program on the 13th was the premiere of Piano Concerto #3 (2022), by Magnus Lindberg performed with the stunning piano soloist, Yuja Wang. The concert opened with Helios Overture, Opus 17 (1903), blissful music by Carl Nielsen. Bela Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra (1943, rev. 1945) was the beautiful and mysterious closing event.

Composer Carl Nielsen

Helios Overture swept the audience away. It is a self-contained, 13 minute, inspired beauty. The SFS performed with conviction and the musicians’ invisible but superb technical prowess. Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen seemed to breathe in concert with the music by the brilliant Danish composer, Carl Nielsen. We arrived in our seats with only moments to spare. This meant that I did not open the program book and learn that there is a subject to the Overture and that it was the sun. At first, I thought it was the ocean. Nielsen had debated the use of programmatic themes in music. Should there be a suggested story or image? He preferred not. And yet, on a trip to Athens with his wife, the heat and sun enveloped his musical imagination. His note on it in a letter to another Danish composer, Thomas Laub, explains his careful steps to program-light. Pun not intended, but it will stay. “My overture describes the movement of the sun through the heavens from morning to evening, but it is only called Helios and no explanation is necessary. What do you think?” What the audience and this writer thought was “Why do I not already know this music?”  Listening, one feels in touch with the universe, caught up in the power and peace of light. Thinking back to Thursday, I think I heard the audience catch its breath and sigh.

Composer Magnus Lindberg

Magnus Lindberg and Esa-Pekka Salonen are both Finnish, were born only 3 days apart, and were close friends while studying composition in the Sibelius Academy, Helsinki. Mr. Lindberg established a reputation for fine compositions of great complexity. He explores extreme rhythms played on top of one another. In order to make his music continue to raise the bar for  intensely complex sound and timing, he invented computer programs to go beyond what humans perceive on their own. In some ways, the Piano Concerto #3 approaches classical ways, but they are Lindberg’s translation of classical.

Yuja Wang, Concert Pianist

There is no doubt that his decision to write the Concerto for Yuja Wang to perform was important to the identity of the music. Ms Wang plays the piano with strength. In her performance, it was clear that she was catching all of the directions of the changing and over lapping rhythms. It seemed as though she kept a beat in her head and others in her fast fingers and even in her feet which were dressed in high heel shoes with pom poms on the toes. Yuja Wang presents herself as a devil may care fashionista beauty. She can do that because she is the absolute Ace of pianists. I cannot imagine this Concerto without her. In their onstage conversation after the end of all of the performance, Mr. Lindberg and Ms. Wang offered more descriptions to the audience. They had made edits in the score during their rehearsals. The Piano Concerto #3 could actually be three concerti as each of the three movements are distinct in their sound and structure. It was fascinating, thrilling music performed with the height of musical intelligence. Mr. Lindberg says that the orchestra is his favorite instrument. He certainly uses all of it in every way through unknown dimensions. We need to hear it again!

Composer Bela Bartok, 1927

Bela Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra has a dramatic “back story.” Bartok was in his native Hungary. The fascist governments in Europe had taken over. He wanted to leave but remained to take care of his mother. When she passed away, 1939, he and his family left for America as soon as possible. He arrived in 1940.  In America he was broke, and his health began to go downhill. He had leukemia. His condition and his poverty meant he had to stay in a hospital. Two of his Hungarian friends, Joseph Szigeti, violinist, and Fritz Reiner, conductor, were also in the US. They urged Serge Koussevitzky, Boston Symphony conductor, to help Bartok, and he did. He offered $1000 as a commission for a new work. Bartok would not accept it as charity, but Koussevitzky was smart. He told Bartok that he had to give him $500 before the piece was written and the other half when a new piece was completed. It worked to put Bartok, now terribly weak, back to work. A concerto for an orchestra may seem a contradiction in terms as the usual concerto singles out one instrument playing solos intermittently, with or against the full orchestra. Bartok structured this work so that many instruments of the orchestra would be featured, often  in “couples.” He employed the sounds and individuality of the bassoons, oboes, flutes, trumpets, clarinets to create the architecture of the music. As one would expect, the final composition is completely his own. Bartok apparently was not a fan of Shostakovich, but the Russian composer was much in favor in the US, in part because of the alliance between Russia and the US. In the fourth movement, Interrupted Intermezzo: Allegretto, what Bartok called “brutal band music which is derided, ridiculed by the orchestra. After the band has gone away, the melody resumes its waltz–only a little bit more sadly than before.” This piece became an enormous success, loved by audiences and musicians. It has five movements and his “night music” appears especially in Elegy, the third movement. This Concerto has a sense of mystery running through it, beautiful music but with a touch of off center, ill at ease uncertainty. The journey through all the movements ends with an uplifting, positive feeling of celebration. The audience at the premiere cheered him. According to Bartok, Koussevitzky said it was “‘the best orchestra piece of the last 25 years.'” The music is pure magic.