Yuja Wang plays Boulez in China

Yuja Wang plays Boulez in China

Daily Comfort Zone

norman lebrecht

January 02, 2024

This is an unofficial snatch of some challenging repertoire that Yuja delivered on her homeland tour last month.

Next stop, the Boulez sonata?

Comments

  • Peter says:

    Nice. But hardly newsworthy.

  • Jan Kaznowski says:

    ==Next stop, the Boulez sonata?

    There are three

  • zayin says:

    Once you program Boulez into a computer, it will execute flawlessly every time, and the raison d’être for playing Boulez is gone, because his compositions are intended purely to deconstruct rhythmic and dynamic structures, there is no other artistic dimension to explore, the complexity IS the aesthetic, the surface IS the art, the “notations” ARE the music, a human does not add anything more to the perfectly programmed computer.

    But I digress because no one goes to a Yuja Wang concert to see what she’ll play, but to see, period.

    • nimitta says:

      Right about Boulez, zayin…

      …and dead wrong about Wang. Period

    • Skylar says:

      Not very nice to say this about Yuja if the rumors are true that Chicago wants Mäkelä, zayin. But I digress because Chicago has no chance either way.

  • Couperin says:

    Did she screw up the end? Lol. Sounds awesome though. She should tackle sonata no 2!

  • Hilary says:

    Wang recently recorded the gigue from Schoenberg’s Suite . This piece ( in the form of a canon ) and parts of the first two Sonatas can seem like an offshoot of that piece . She’s a fabulous pianist .

  • Sue Sonata Form says:

    I call this composer (and similar composers) “De Pussy”, as the notes a cat would press walking randomly across a piano would create the ‘composition’.

  • David A. Boxwell says:

    I couldn’t tell: did she play any wrong notes?

  • John Borstlap says:

    I like this stuff! I always play one pli of Pli selon Pli before I go to bed to have my mental balance restored.

    Sally

  • Michael says:

    Bottom line…she sells…just like Muti!

  • ParallelFifths says:

    Sonatas 1-3 would be a nifty fit for a recording from Yuja. Idil Biret’s set done Radio France in the mid-’90s is one of the overlooked gems in the Naxos catalogue.

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