Yuja to lead orchestra in Paris

Yuja to lead orchestra in Paris

News

norman lebrecht

November 26, 2023

The pianist will lead the Mahler Chamber Orchestra in the Paris Philharmonie in January.

The programme includes Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, directed from the keyboard.

Comments

  • Peter San Diego says:

    Delightful programming!

  • Adam Stern says:

    A formidable program! Here’s wishing her the best of luck with it, and hoping there will be some video documentation.

  • Ludwig's Van says:

    She’s already bored with playing the piano?

  • HSY says:

    This is playing without a conductor, not really conducting. I don’t think she will be involved with the Dvořák piece. However, based on prior evidence (she already played the first two Beethoven concertos with the same orchestra without a conductor in 2017; you can find recordings on YouTube), I don’t doubt the end result will be better than with a conductor involved.

  • Anon says:

    Isn’t it interesting that the utterly gender obsessed US music journalists have steadfastly ignored her for several years now? They only deigned to write about her when it would be truly weird not to, like when she did that Rachmaninoff marathon at the Carnegie Hall. They would much rather promote inferior white male pianists instead. Keep this in mind the next time they champion another substandard DEI concoction.

  • Sue Sonata Form says:

    This woman is amazing. Is there anything she cannot do? Is there any work she cannot play? What a phenomenal memory, just for starters.

    I see her eventually moving into conducting itself.

  • Tony Sanderson says:

    Great to see her broadening her repertoire all the time.

  • David says:

    Old news, the concert with Yuja as pianist and conductor has been announced for ages.

  • Joel Lazar says:

    The Stravinsky is tricky…and orchestras don’t play it often. Wishing all the best of luck!

  • Nicola says:

    I doubt she’ll be conducting the Dvořák, a piece she has probably never heard of…

  • FrauGeigerin says:

    Anyone can conduct these days.

  • pieter van winkel says:

    playing ánd conducting the Stravinsky concerto for piano and winds: chapeau!

  • Ruben Greenberg says:

    This is the first time I’ve ever seen Ferde Grofé, who orchestrated Rhapsody in Blue, get any credit on a programme! Did Gershwin orchestrate his later works? -Porgy and Bess, for example?

    • Ricardo J says:

      Yes, Gershwin orchestrated Porgy and Bess himself. Critic/composer Virgil Thomson described the result as “gefilte fish orchestration.” I have never understood what he meant.

      • Max Raimi says:

        He also found Sibelius Second “vulgar, self-indulgent, and provincial beyond all description.” Hell hath no fury like a mediocrity encountering genius.

        • Adam Stern says:

          From William R. Trotter’s excellent biography of Dimitri Mitropoulos, regarding critics’ reactions to The Minnesota Orchestra’s 1943 performance in New York City under Mitropoulos’ direction:

          “…Virgil Thomson sniffed disdainfully at the Rachmaninoff Second Symphony (he leaned over to his companion’s ear as the first lugubrious bars were being played by the low strings and whispered: ‘Strained stool!’)…”

    • Byrwec Ellison says:

      In the early 1940s, a few years after George’s death, his estate’s music editor Frank Campbell-Watson commissioned full symphonic arrangements of Gershwin’s major works heard in the concert hall today. “Rhapsody in Blue” was re-scored for full orchestra by Ferde Grofé, who had arranged the original 1924 jazz band version. Campbell-Watson himself revised “An American in Paris” (with incorrectly tuned car horns). Robert McBride re-did both the “Second Rhapsody” and the first orchestral version of “Girl Crazy Overture”; the original Broadway overture was scored by Robert Russell Bennett, who also extracted a symphonic suite from “Porgy & Bess.” Some 40 years after McBride’s “Girl Crazy” edition, the Gershwin Trust asked Don Rose to do a symphonic arrangement that hewed more closely to Bennett’s original overture to the show, which is why “Girl Crazy” exists in three sanctioned editions.

  • David A. Boxwell says:

    More importantly: What will she be wearing while conducting from the keyboard?

  • another orchestra musician says:

    Zayin, how are such comments tolerated on this site… NL, you like this sort of hatefulness?

  • HReardon says:

    ” Conducting is the easy alternative.” Gustav Leonhardt

  • Zandonai says:

    She’s dating a conductor and must have learned a thing or two about holding a stick.

    • Andrew says:

      Joking aside, if she were to conduct and play using a stick that would be impressive indeed. Seriously though, I am sure she will receive some top-notch coaching from her partner. And playing and conducting the Stravinsky is in itself quite a feat.

  • Dark Tune says:

    Anyone who is a woman (or claim to be one) or black people can be a conductor these days. The western orchestras are just doing whatever to hurt the classical music and to make their sense of sin less heavy.

  • MOST READ TODAY: