CD Review (The Straits Times, November 2016)

THE BEST & RARITIES

YUJA WANG, Piano

Deutsche Grammophon 4826653 

(CD + DVD) / ****1/2

The virtuosity of Chinese piano phenomenon Yuja Wang is already well-known. This compilation rehashes highlights from her earlier recordings, including pieces by Chopin, Brahms, Ravel, Stravinsky, Ligeti and a platter of virtuosic transcriptions by Horowitz, Cziffra and Volodos.

She tantalisingly offers four new tracks, where digital dexterity is the main draw, from Scarlatti's Sonata in G major (K.455) to a live performance of Prokofiev's Toccata, where memories of a young Martha Argerich are rekindled. That she is able to bring out the tongue-in-cheek of Rachmaninov's Polka De V.W. or the vertiginous runs in Art Tatum's version of Tea For Two is a testament to her versatility.  

The accompanying DVD entitled Through The Eyes Of Yuja, a 49-minute film by Anais and Olivier Spiro, provides glimpses of a young jet-setting artist's life on the road. From Kansas City to Zurich and Caracas, she is seen rehearsing and performing works like Prokofiev's Second Piano Concerto and Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto. 

She acquits herself as a modest and mostly likeable personality, besides being a true servant of music. Fans of her hyper-charged pianism (and low-cut outfits) will need no further encouragement in acquiring this album. 

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, February 2016)

RAVEL Piano Concertos

FAURÉ Ballade

YUJA WANG, Piano

Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich 

Lionel Bringuier, Conductor

Deutsche Grammophon 479 4954 / ****1/2

Both of Maurice Ravel's piano concertos were composed around the same period, between 1929 and 1931. While these are vastly contrasted works, both are united by one common thread: the influence of new world jazz, particularly the use of syncopated rhythms and the blues idiom. 

The G major concerto in three movements is characterised by unusual orchestration and the unlikely juxtaposition of Basque music and Mozartean simplicity. The D major concerto in one movement is the world's best known work for the left hand alone. Its central jazzy march episode has a similar insistent quality that can be found in Ravel’s infamous Bolero, and it culminates with a massive cadenza before the end.

Chinese phenomenon Yuja Wang performs with a lightness and mercurial quality that serves the music well, especially in the scintillating runs and volatile climaxes. The woodwind solos by members of the Swiss orchestra in both concertos are excellent which help put these performances in the top drawer of CD recordings. 

As a filler, Wang includes the solo piano version of the Ballade by Ravel's teacher Gabriel Fauré, a highly lyrical work that belongs to an earlier era, that of the more innocent Belle Epoque. Wang cuts a glamourous figure, but what has baring her midriff for the album cover have to do with this music?

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, July 2014)

DUBOIS Piano Concertos

CEDRIC TIBERHIEN, Piano

BBC Scottish Symphony / Andrew Manze

Hyperion 67931 / ****1/2

History and posterity might judge French composer Theodore Dubois (1837-1924) as a staid academic and musical arch-conservative. Those qualities also apply to his contemporary, the well-loved Camille Saint-Saëns who was no more a revolutionary in his music. This disc of three Dubois piano concertos should align the two establishment figures in better perspective and possibly tip in favour of the underdog. His single-movement Concerto-Capriccioso in C minor (1876) opens with an extended solo cadenza, and shifts from seriousness to keyboard glitter, not unlike the 1^st movement of Saint-Saens’s popular Second Piano Concerto (1868).    

The Second Piano Concerto in F minor (1897) is the longest work at 28 minutes but is almost perfectly judged as not to outlive its welcome. Its four-movement form including a quirky staccato-laden Scherzo, which lasts all of two minutes, seems almost identical in proportion to Prokofiev’s modernistic Second Piano Concerto, a world away in terms of musical idiom. Finally the Suite for Piano & Strings (1917), also in four movements, is a total charmer from his old age. The fact that 41 years separate the three works makes little difference to Dubois, who rarely varied his style or palette to move with the times. These performances by French virtuoso Cedric Tiberghien, sympathetically accompanied by excellent Scottish forces, sparkle like champagne, should win new friends for the much-maligned Dubois.   

BRAHMS Violin Sonatas

LEONIDAS KAVAKOS, Violin

YUJA WANG, Piano

Decca 478 6442 / *****

It is refreshing to see and hear two of the world’s most celebrated soloists go into anti-virtuoso mode in the give-and-take world of chamber music-making. The three violin sonatas (Opus 78, 100 and 108) of Johannes Brahms could hardly be described as “easy”, but the depth of musicianship demanded goes beyond mere technical command and instrumental virtuosity. Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos is an established chamber music veteran, having recently completed a superb Beethoven sonata cycle (also on Decca), while Yuja Wang sheds her solo diva image to be a close to ideal partner.

Even in the faster outer movements of the sonatas, there is no hint of flash or fireworks, instead a subdued and sublime air dominates. Kavakos’s tone is sweet, Wang’s piano is deliberately understated and the balance they achieve together is perfect. The slow movements are as lovely as they are breathtaking in conception. As a bonus, the duo includes the tempestuous but early Scherzo in C minor (from the FAE Sonata crafted by three composers for the violinist Joseph Joachim), which opens the disc, and as an encore a transcription of Brahms’s Cradle Song, a somnolent but effective way to sign off. Warmly recommended. 

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, May 2014)

RACHMANINOV Piano Concerto No.3

PROKOFIEV Piano Concerto No.2

YUJA WANG, Piano

Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra

GUSTAVO DUDAMEL

Deutsche Grammophon 479 130 4 / *****

It’s official: Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto and Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto have become the most performed 20^th century concertos by young pianists of today. Both accounted for two thirds of the six finalists’ choices at the 2013 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, and now this latest disc by young Chinese keyboard superstar Yuja Wang. Conceived within three years of each other, both exude Russian pathos at its darkest and most brooding, but take divergent paths to stratospheric virtuoso heights. Rachmaninov’s is the last great Romantic concerto, while Prokofiev’s melding of steely dissonance and percussiveness heralded a new age.

These are terrific live recordings which made up one explosive concert programme in Caracas, Venezuela in February 2013. Wang’s approach is reminiscent of Vladimir Ashkenazy’s scintillating first recording of the Rachmaninov in 1963. Lithe and mercurial, both used the smaller and lighter of two 1^st movement cadenzas, and Wang shaves a full minute off Ashkenazy. The blistering pacing she and the young players of the Simon Bolivar Orchestra led by the charismatic Gustavo Dudamel adopt in the Prokofiev, especially in the tempestuous finale, leaves all rivals in their wake. This one does not disappoint.

BRITTEN Complete Orchestral

& Instrumental Music

Decca 478 545 1 (13 CDs) / *****

Although Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) was best regarded for his operas and vocal music, his orchestral and instrumental music hold a special place because of their accessibility and and inventiveness. Young listeners will always be indebted to his Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra and concert-goers to his concertos, Sinfonia da Requiem and Frank Bridge Variations which do get performed off and on. In this definitive Decca commemorative release, it is Britten himself who conducts the major works, supporting major artists like Sviatoslav Richter (in the Piano Concerto), Mstislav Rostropovich (Cello Symphony), Mark Lubotsky (Violin Concerto) and Julius Katchen (Diversions for piano & orchestra) in definitive readings.

Much of his earlier instrumental music and student works for almost every instrumental combination possible (from humble recorders to pipe organ and string quartet) are virtually unknown. Some were written with children in mind and every note has been brought together in this multi-label (13 at last count) enterprise. These reveal an eclectic and innovative voice, sometimes naïve, playful but always witty, which eventually coalesce into his highly individual, often dissonant yet distinctive style. Many of the performances here are first recordings. There are surprises aplenty and repeated listening will be rewarded manifold.

This set retails at $84 

(excluding postage and packaging) 

at www.prestoclassical.co.uk

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, July 2012)

FANTASIA

YUJA WANG, Piano

Deutsche Grammophon 479 0052 

*****

It’s been ages since Deutsche Grammophon devoted an entire new disc to piano encores. This privilege falls on the brilliant fingers of Chinese sensation Yuja Wang, who treats this as a concept album and fashion statement. Perhaps only her stylist knows why she is being clad in a flouncy red gown and sprouting black feathery wings from her back.

Her keyboard flight of fantasy in centred around two longish encores. Victor Staub’s transcription of Dukas’s The Sorceror’s Apprentice is virtually unknown, but is highly effective with Wang’s razor-keen reflexes. Horowitz’s conception of the Liszt transcription of Saint-Saëns’s Danse Macabre is much recorded, and Wang’s version is as thrilling as Horowitz’s own. The plausible links between both these pieces are Mickey Mouse cartoons and a surfeit of technical diablerie.

The other encores are grouped loosely as Rachmaninov Études-tableaux, Scriabin miniatures (Préludes, an Étude and Poem) and assorted delights. The best of the latter contrasts flowing lines (Gluck-Sgambati Melody from Orpheus) with rhythmic exuberance (Albeniz’s Triana) and more piled-on virtuosity (Horowitz Carmen Variations and Strauss-Cziffra Tritsch-Tratsch Polka) with her own added flourishes. Whichever way one likes it, this anthology is a winner.

GOTTSCHALK 

Complete Solo Piano Music

PHILIP MARTIN, Piano

Hyperion 44451/8 (8 CDs) 

****1/2

The first truly-American composer and piano virtuoso is widely acknowledged to be one Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829-1869), a Creole born in New Orleans, who studied and began his performing career in Europe. His large body of piano music, while consisting of a variable potpourri of Romantic excess and sentimentality, is important because of the adoption of Ibero-Latin, Afro-American and Caribbean styles and beats, which would go on to influence later generations of composers as diverse as Joplin, Lecuona, Milhaud, Villa-Lobos and Granados. The shorter dance pieces like The Banjo, Bamboula, Pasquinade, Manchega, Le Bananier and Souvenirs D’Andalousie, full of infectious rhythms and syncopations, are must-listens for his quintessential spirit and idioms.

The influence of Chopin may be discerned in swooning salon numbers as the posthumous Ballades, while the vulgar side of Liszt is all-pervasive in several opera transcriptions and meretricious variations on melodies like Carnival of Venice and Home, Sweet Home. The worst potboilers are reserved for various fantasies on national anthems, among them Brazil, Portugal and the USA. The one that takes the cake is Union, a cacophonous jumble that mixes up Yankee Doodle, Hail Columbia and Star-Spangled Banner in a flag-waving musical train wreck. Despite all this, the 109 separate pieces in this collection are lovingly performed by British pianist Philip Martin, who revels in its languorous lyricism, scintillating fireworks and outward humour, warts and all.

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, January 2012)

RACHMANINOV
Piano Concerto No.2 / Paganini Rhapsody
YUJA WANG, Piano
Mahler Chamber Orchestra / Claudio Abbado
Deutsche Grammophon 477 9308 / *****

It is curious to note that the last two Deutsche Grammophon recordings of these Rachmaninov concertos were recorded by young Chinese pianists in their 20s. First it was Lang Lang in 2004, with his idiosyncratic pacing that almost wrecked the opening of the Second Piano Concerto, but no such fears exist for Yuja Wang. Her totally idiomatic readings are a pleasure from start to finish, rekindling fond memories of her teacher Gary Graffman’s legendary recording with Leonard Bernstein’s New York Philharmonic (reissued on Sony Classical) from the 1960s.

She does not merely master the notes but owns the music, knowing instinctually when to broaden the tempos to savour the aromas and to when step on the gas to go for broke. This is a characteristic of live performances where liberties are taken, such as rounding up the last movement’s final cadenza with an ecstatic chord, and the feel of spontaneity keeps the listener hooked. The Paganini Rhapsody is no less exciting, with the build-up to the glorious 18th Variation a perfectly rising arch. The highly responsive Mahler Chamber Orchestra is somewhat a misnomer, because it does “big” works too. This is the new recording of the Rachmaninov warhorses to have.

RUFINATSCHA
The Bride of Messina Overture / Symphony No.6
BBC Philharmonic / Gianandrea Noseda
Chandos 10665 / ****1/2

Johann Rufinatscha (1812-1993) was born in South Tyrol along the Austrian-Italian border but spent much of his professional life in Vienna. His orchestral music is distinguished by its academic vigour, written in the early Romantic idiom of the Central European school that spanned Schubert to Brahms. The Bride Of Messina Overture opens with Beethovenian overtones of tragedy and expends a good 14 minutes making it a tone poem of sorts. His ambitious and last symphony, the Sixth Symphony in D major (1865), runs close to an hour, but is well worth hearing.

There is a lightness of spirit that suggests Schubert and breadth of scope that looks towards Bruckner and early Mahler. Like many composer before and after him, its Scherzo is a lively country dance followed by an expansive Schumann-influenced slow movement that displays a more serious side. The celebratory finale is one the young Brahms might have written, and it is an enjoyable romp to cap an unlikely symphonic legacy. This is Volume One of a projected cycle, and the quality of playing – responsive and committed - from the Manchester-based orchestra makes further instalments a welcome prospect.

3 Best Classical Albums of 2010

Its the end of 2010, and The Straits Times gets me to name the three best classical albums of the year, and here they are:

BEETHOVEN Cello Sonatas
LI-WEI QIN, Cello
ALBERT TIU, Piano
Decca 889 9119 (2CDs)

Beethoven’s five cello sonatas, highly original works and without precedent, receive performances of vigour and brio from Chinese-Australian cellist Li-Wei Qin and Filipino pianist Albert Tiu. Qin’s tone is voluminous and breathtaking, while Tiu’s exacting role is pursued with great immediacy and clarity. Retailing at 2 CDs for the price of one, this album has the added distinction of being Made in Singapore.

TRANSFORMATION
YUJA WANG, Piano
Deutsche Grammophon 477 8795

The 23-year-old Chinese phenom’s second recording tops her celebrated début effort, simply because her technique in ferociously demanding works such as Stravinsky’s Three Movements From Petrushka, Brahms’ Paganini Variations and Ravel’s La Valse is always in service of the music. She makes everything sound ever so simple, so be prepared to be blown away.

BACH & BEYOND
Bach Collegium Japan
MASAAKI SUZUKI
BIS 9036/39 (15 CDs)

This is the ultimate stocking filler for the festive season, a selection of Bach’s choral and instrumental music performed by one of the finest early music ensembles on the planet. Besides Bach, one will also be enchanted by music from Handel, Vivaldi, Monteverdi, Buxtehude, Schütz and Ahle. The familiar and obscure get equal billing, and full documentation with texts and translations make this ever so pleasurable. Simply not to be missed.

WHICH YOUNG PIANIST DO YOU REGARD AS THE FUTURE OF THE CLASSICAL PIANO? Results of Pianomania Poll

The results of the most recent Pianomania Poll are out, drawn from 97 entries over the past four months. The names of young pianists were drawn from lists of recent competition winners and concert listings, representing talents from different parts of the globe. The piano has become a universally popular instrument and the greatest pianists of the future can come from any part of the world today. 

No.1 

YUJA WANG (China) 

42 votes, 43%

Was there any doubt that this Chinese female phenom of the piano would top this list? Her two recordings on the Deutsche Grammophon label were simply superb, and her Singapore recital proved beyond any doubt that all the hype about her were for real.

No.2 

SERGIO TIEMPO (Venezuela) 

24 votes, 25% 

 A very visible presence thanks to his recordings on EMI Classics and frequent appearances at Martha Argerich's Lugano Festival. Is Venezuela and El Sistema the way to the future of music? Better believe it!

NO.3 

RACHEL CHEUNG (Hongkong) 

21 votes, 21% 

The 19-year-old is going places, having won 5th prize at the 2009 Leeds International Piano Competition, and more recently a semi-final appearance at the Chopin Competition. Further prizes in major competitions are expected.

NO.4: LISE DE LA SALLE (France), 

BENJAMIN GROSVENOR (UK), 

ZHANG HAOZHEN (China) (11 votes, 11%)

De la Salle is already established as a concert and recording artist, a very special talent. Young Grosvenor impressed greatly with his recital at the Singapore International Piano Festival, while Zhang's win at thr 2009 Van Cliburn has won him many concert opportunities. The latter's Singapore recital in 2011 will be keenly awaited.

NO.5: NOBUYUKI TSUJII (Japan), 

EDUARD KUNZ (Russia) 9 votes, 9 % 

No.6: JOHN CHEN (New Zealand) 8 votes, 8%

Tsujii was a big winner at the 2009 Cliburn, a triumph of the human spirit over adversity. Kunz and Chen, past winners of piano competitions, are gradually establishing their concert careers.

Thanks for the votes, and look out for the next Pianomania Poll: WHICH IS THE GREATEST PIANO CONCERTO OF THEM ALL?

CHOPIN AT 200 / Singapore International Piano Festival 2010 / Review

CHOPIN AT 200

Singapore International Piano Festival 2010

Victoria Concert Hall

Wednesday to Saturday

(23-26 June 2010)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 28 June 2010.

The music of Frédéric Chopin was purportedly the uniting theme of this year’s PianoFest. However under the watch of new Artistic Director Lionel Choi, the sub-plot of showcasing the instrument’s newest glittering names took a firm hold. In a line-up with shades of the 2001 edition (21^st Century Pianists), the young and gifted illuminated a bright and promising future for the art of piano performance.

Whatever one has heard of China’s Yuja Wang in print, gossip or youtube, it is all true. At 23, her waif-like physical stature and guileless demeanor belied a thoughtful and often profound interpreter with devastating technical facility. Antithesis to the swaying and swooning Lang Lang, her ramrod straight posture and complete lack of affectation or extraneous effects rendered the range of sounds she produced all the more incredulous. 

Whether barnstorming Chopin’s Funeral March Sonata, teasing out singing lines in three Schubert-Liszt song transcriptions, or pummeling the life out of the Steinway grand in Prokofiev’s incendiary Sixth Sonata, every quantum was in service of the music. In the set of short pieces by Scriabin, her ability to negotiate between smouldering calm and outright violence within the space of seconds was uncanny and breathtaking. The full-house audience at the first evening was left wondering whether they had just witnessed the heir-apparent to legends like Horowitz or Argerich.

Six years younger was the Briton Benjamin Grosvenor, cradle-snatched for his Singapore début on Friday evening. Despite a slight awkwardness in stage deportment, everything he did suggested a close-to-formed artist rather than former child prodigy. Three of Nikolai Kapustin’s jazzy Concert Études served as delicious finger-warmers before the main course. His Chopin, two Nocturnes book-ending the Third Scherzo, juxtaposed seamless cantabile with scintillation and immaculate octave-work. 

Ravel’s devilish Gaspard de la nuit bristled, not just with stunning note-perfection but a multi-layered appreciation of its three movements; the variegated rippling of Ondine, desolation in Le Gibet and Scarbo’s impish malevolence. The mighty Liszt B Minor Sonata unleashed a young lion’s appetite for blood, reveling in arch virtuosity and stampeding pages, often pushed to the limit. Further years of experience might temper his approach but hopefully not quell the inner fire. In the meantime, let us all exult in Grosvenor’s youthful exuberance.

In his early forties, Polish-born Piotr Anderszewski, who first appeared at PianoFest in 1997, is a veteran by comparison. Chopin was conspicuously absent from his well-balanced programme, in its place the pervasive spirit of J.S.Bach. As always, Anderszewski’s Bach is a thing of beauty. The English Suite No.5 brought out all these qualities: mastery of counterpoint, bell-like ringing clarity and rhythmic vitality in its seven movements. 

Completely different was Pole Karol Szymanowski’s Metopes, three impressionistic visions of Grecian maidens of mythology, fair and foul. An antidote to Ravel’s Ondine, these were seductive in a hypnotic and oblique manner, abetted by Anderszewski’s sensitive, tactile pianism that ranged from fleeting whispers to an orgiastic frenzy. 

Schumann’s Six Canonic Studies (Op.56) and Beethoven’s penultimate A flat major Sonata (Op.110) completed the picture, music hewn from common inspirations and carved out with the most crystalline of timbres. Never a harsh sound to be heard, Anderszewski turned sobbing lament in the sonata’s 3rd movement aria into a victory of hope and affirmation. It was this human and anti-virtuosic quality that made this recital the most satisfying of all. The next edition of Asia’s premier piano festival cannot come soon enough.

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, June 2010)

TRANSFORMATION

YUJA WANG, Piano

Deutsche Grammophon 477 8795

*****

Following the critical success of her début recording, Yuja Wang’s sophomore CD is even better. The repertoire is pure virtuoso fodder from the competition mill, but she is on top of everything. In Stravinsky’s Three Movements from Petrushka, Wang matches Maurizio Pollini’s famous 1970s recording for sheer incisiveness, and even tops it with a buoyancy and windswept lightness that defies belief. Taking certain liberties in phrasing and textures, she makes this reading very much her own. 

Like the legendary Michelangeli and Earl Wild, she merges both books of Brahms’ fearsome Paganini Variations and also reorders some of the sequences. With crystal clarity and faultless control, the results are stunning. Ravel’s sweeping La Valse, with its monstrous chords and decadent glissandi, completes the picture. Two little Scarlatti sonatas, played with delicacy and insight, demonstrate an all-rounded musicality. Be prepared to be blown away.

VOLODOS IN VIENNA

ARCADI VOLODOS, Piano

Sony Classical 88697568872

*****

The Russian arch-virtuoso Arcadi Volodos is without doubt one of the most compelling pianists today. This 2009 recital in the Golden Hall of Vienna’s Musikverein confirms that he is the true successor Russian icons like Horowitz, Richter and Gilels. Seldom have musical judgment, tonal allure and digital dexterity been better aligned. 

His programming is also unusual, beginning with a handful of Scriabin miniatures (Préludes and dances), whetting the palate before the feverish intensity of the Russian mystic’s Seventh Sonata “White Mass”. Then come the variegated leaves from Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales and Schumann’s Forest Scenes, all delivered with delicious wit and rare insight. In Liszt’s barnstorming Dante Sonata, he does a Horowitz by adding his own outrageous embellishments. Artistic licence or self-indulgent hubris? At any rate, this artist demands to be heard.

CHOPIN 200^th Anniversary Edition

EMI Classics 9671172 (16 CDs)

****

Every work that Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) wrote included the piano. Despite the ambitious title, this is a mixed bag including chamber music and songs from 20 different pianists dating between 1955 and 2009. The sound quality is variable but mostly acceptable. The lion’s share of performances come from American Garrick Ohlsson, the 1970 Chopin International Piano Competition winner, who is excellent in the Piano Concertos, Nocturnes, Préludes and Polonaises (including those written as a child and teenager). Also worth listening to are the 58 Mazurkas and several dances from the late great Ronald Smith, and Andrei Gavrilov’s blistering account of the Études.

Not all Chopin is great music; his early First Sonata (Op.4) is derivative despite an ardent reading from Leif Ove Andsnes. And does anyone really care about his Souvenir de Paganini, short variations on Carnival of Venice, even if it is played by Daniel Barenboim? The newest tracks are by the youngest pianist, 17-year-old Briton Benjamin Grosvenor, who performs Chopin’s miscellany – mostly obscure short pieces and shavings from a master’s workbench – with much sympathy. Hear him in more substantial fare at this year’s Piano Festival.

MUSIC FOR CLARINET & PIANO

EMMA JOHNSON, Clarinet

JOHN LENEHAN, Piano

Naxos 8.572240

****1/2

This is a very accessible anthology of 20th century repertoire for the clarinet, which has unwittingly become a memorial for jazz legend Sir John Dankworth (1927-2010), the husband of Dame Cleo Lane. His Suite For Emma in five dance movements, written for Johnson, straddle between classical and popular/jazz forms. These are the lightest pieces here with the exception of Picture Of Jeanie, a scored improvisation of Stephen Foster’s Jeanie With Her Light Brown Hair.

The music takes on a slightly more serious tone with Aaron Copland’s early Nocturne (1926, originally for violin) and Clarinet Sonata (1943) which skillfully combine the blues with his more structured creations. Leonard Bernstein’s first published work was his Clarinet Sonata (1942), a witty 2-movement work that pays tribute to his teacher Paul Hindemith and mentor Copland. Former BBC Young Musician of the Year Johnson performs with disarming ease and fervour. Warmly recommended.

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, December 2009)

SONATAS & ÉTUDES
YUJA WANG, Piano
Deutsche Grammophon 477 8140
****1/2

Move aside Li Yundi, here comes his replacement! Yuja Wang (or Wang Yujia), now 22, is the latest Chinese piano sensation to set the musical world alight. A former student of Gary Graffman (who also mentored Lang Lang), she allies a prodigious technique with more profound musical values rare for someone this young. There is no showboating for its own sake in Chopin’s Second Sonata “Funeral March”, yet it sounds as gripping as Ivo Pogorelich’s classic account from almost 20 years ago.

Interestingly, she also replicates the eccentric Serb’s coupling of Liszt’s Sonata in B minor with Scriabin’s Sonata-Fantasy in G sharp minor (Op.19). Although she offers no new insights to the music, she is well-attuned to the differing idioms and sounds every bit convincing. Two short but fiendishly challenging Études by György Ligeti – Fanfares and The Sorceror’s Apprentice (Der Zauberlehling) – completes the picture. She is ready for pianistic super-stardom.

Note: The Hong Kong edition of this CD includes a bonus track, the Mozart-Volodos Rondo alla Turca. Its not quite Volodos but still very good.

THE MOZART ALBUM
DANIELLE DE NIESE, Soprano

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

Sir Charles Mackerras
Decca 478 1511
*****

Does anybody in Singapore remember the appearance of Australian-born soprano Danielle de Niese at SSO’s Christmas Concert in 1998 conducted by Bart Folse? Then a student and mere teenager, she enchanted with her sparkling vocals and bubbly presence. Now a legit diva, she commands the stage in this all-Mozart programme, beginning with the popular motet Exsultate, Jubilate and fiery concert aria Bella mia fiamma, addio!, showcasing a brilliant coloratura facility.

Mozart’s operas are founded on a rare lyricism and vocal flexibility which give depth and sympathy to his characters. De Niese is a lovely Susanna (Marriage Of Figaro), Despina (Cosi Fan Tutte) and Zerlina (Don Giovanni), the last partnering a lusty Bryn Terfel in the tender duet La ci darem la mano. A lesser known gem is the aria Oh, temerario Arbace!, astonishingly from a 10-year-old Mozart’s hand, where all of her strengths come to a happy confluence. Simply irresistible.