| Yuja Wang (王羽佳) | |
|---|---|
 Receiving 2011 Echo Klassik award, Oct. 2, 2011, Berlin | |
| Born | February 10, 1987 Beijing, China |
| Nationality | Chinese |
| Alma mater | Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia, 2008 |
| Occupation | Pianist |
Wang is one of the few pianists to become a ‘major international presence’ by her 21st birthday.[4] She “meshes an impeccable technique and insightful artistry, evident both on disc and in live concerts.”[5] Wang has performed in concert halls around the world and records with Deutsche Grammophon. Her repertoire is considered broad and eclectic, including works by Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Scriabin, Rachmaninov, and Prokofiev.[4]
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Early life[edit]
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]Education[edit]
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[edit]
Early career[edit]
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[edit]
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 conductors[edit]
As of 2013, Wang has performed with many of the world’s leading 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]Wang has worked with many leading conductors around the world, including Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Gustavo Dudamel, Charles Dutoit, Daniele Gatti, Valery Gergiev, Mikko Franck, Manfred Honeck, Pietari Inkinen, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Kurt Masur, Antonio Pappano, Yuri Temirkanov and Michael Tilson Thomas.[15]
Discography[edit]
Main article: Yuja Wang 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]
Although there are reports Wang released a debut CD in 1995,[23][24][25] there is little information available about it.
Reviews[edit]
Music critics have largely reacted enthusiastically to Wang’s performances and recordings. In a review of her 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[edit]
- 2006: Gilmore Young Artist Award[29]
- 2009: Gramophone Classic FM’s Young Artist of the Year [8]
- 2009: Grammy Award Nomination, Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (Without Orchestra) for debut album Sonata & Etudes[30]
- 2010: Avery Fisher Career Grant Recipient[31]
- 2011: Echo Klassik Young Artist of the Year[32]
- 2012: Grammy Award Nomination, Best Classical Instrumental Solo, for Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 2 In C Minor, Op. 18 and Rhapsody On A Theme Of Paganini, from the album Rachmaninov [33]
Personal life[edit]
Wang currently lives in New York City but travels most of the time playing concerts around the world. Had she not developed a career as a pianist, Wang said she might 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]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuja_Wang
Twenty-six year old Chinese pianist Yuja Wang is widely recognized for playing that combines the spontaneity and fearless imagination of youth with the discipline and precision of a mature artist. Regularly lauded for her controlled, prodigious technique, Yuja has been praised for her authority over the most complex technical demands of the repertoire, the depth of her musical insight, as well as her fresh interpretations and graceful, charismatic stage presence.
http://www.yujawang.com/
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