The Chinese-American pianist is playing a four-hand recital with the Icelandic star Víkingur Ólafsson one night in November.
Seats in the main stalls area of the Royal Festival Hall are priced at £160.
That’s steep.
Some would use a harsher adjective.
photo: Matthias Goerne
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Going to cost you a lot Norm to get a close-up in order to comment on Yuja’s outfit
What is the problem? You pay for TWO world class pianists, so you pay double price.
By that logic, how much do you pay to see a symphony orchestra?
On that basis, what then would you pay for a world-class string quartet, let alone a world-class orchestra?
An adjective like extortionate?
Normally people attend concerts by choice. Should anything different happen at this concert, we’ll hear about it in this space, without any doubt.
Programme to be announced, too. Unless this is now updated.
Berio – Wasserklavier
Schubert – Fantasy in f
Ligeti – No. 3 from 3 Pieces for 2 Pianos
Brubeck – Fugue from “Points on Jazz”
Nancarrow – Study No. 1 (arr. Adès)
Adams – Hallelujah Junction
Pärt – Hymn to a Great City
Rachmaninoff – Symphonic Dances
Blimey, really expensive. You could nearly get into Glasto for that! Who wants to spend all that money on a boring classic concert?
Where did you come from? How did you find this site? 😀 You’re totally entitled to your opinion, of course.
There were a lot of cheaper tickets available when booking opened.
The Southbank Centre may also use dynamic pricing for high-demand events like this.
Last time Yuja Wang played at the RFH some Choir seats were as low as £15 but later returns of the same seats and the last minute seats on the stage were sold for £30.
I wonder if she’s tappin’ that.
Yuja is always beautiful
And stalls tickets at Hello Dolly are running £165.00 – so your point is?
Compare that to a Taylor Swift, Madonna or a Beyoncé ticket and it is hardly gouging.
A lot cheaper than some football events which can run into thousands.
It’s almost as if – (gasp) – market forces are dictating demand and pricing.
Paying anything to listen to anything in that venue is “stupifying.”
You don’t have to go.
If you don’t want to pay the price, don’t buy a ticket. If enough people don’t buy tickets, in the future the price will come down or the artist won’t be booked.
Only because concert prices in London are generally remarkably good value. There are other cities where £160 is quite normal. And clearly there is no need to buy the most expensive seats in the house.
When you see Olafsson “in the wild”, it really is astonishing to notice the amount of photoshop DG applies to this guy on its albums. They do the same thing to Makela, turning these otherwise normal, rather dorky-looking dudes into Aryan demigods. Considering past history, more than a little disconcerting.
A mere £40 per hand. A bargain.
I think it’s encouraging that classical stars can command such ticket prices… if they do sell any tickets.
If people are willing to pay…
This is nothing. I paid over $1000 for the Three Tenors Concert back in the day.
Worth every shilling.
About the same in Toronto.
Most of them seem to have been sold, though.
£160, off which the management and promoter will take: ??? and the musicians ???
I’d be reluctant to pay £10.60 to see her. Great dress sense- but so many far greater pianists than YW around
Ii can buy buy many cds for this £160.
Even with the £ to $ exchange, £160 is less than what Yuja tickets often fetch for recitals in San Francisco.
I recall one recital with $250 second tier seats and $400 for the rich people seats.
In the words of the late, great Peter Cook, I have examined my diary and find that I am watching television that night.
Sit further back then if you can’t afford it. Hall will be full.
Always worth it…as pay for quality and excitement…
I have a ticket to hear them at the Philharmonie in Paris on November 3. My ticket in the most expensive category cost 82€ or about 70£. Less than half of the price in London.
For her upcoming appearance at Wiener Konzerthaus (21. November), in which she is scheduled to play the Ravel G-major and has substituted a „jazz suite“ by an unknown Soviet jazz composer for the Shostakovich second concerto (and allegedly act as „Leiterin“), tickets range from 26 € to 105 € (cheaper if you are a member; I got a seat for 24 €). Oddly, the top two price categories have sold out, but the remaining five categories still have availability. Tickets went on sale some months ago.
The “unknown” composer is most likely the late Kapustin who is well known to those of us who have been paying attention for the last three decades or so, ever since Hamelin’s wonderful recording was released.
In fact it’s listed as Alexander Tsfasman, Suite for piano and orchestra »Jazz Suite« (1945 ca.). I found one movement online. It sounds flashy and entertaining.
I read somewhere that the “unknown” Soviet jazz composer is Alexander Tsfasman whose Jazz Suite for piano & orchestra (also known as “Snowflakes!”), is great fun and has received several recordings including a live Verbier with a stunningly brilliant Pletnev (unfortunately with sluggish Kent Nagano trudging behind!). Yuja should be a dream for this one!
A solo Yo-Yo Ma concert in the US is going for about the same and selling out. Capitalism hits musical Britain.
Until recently, I tried to attend every concert Olafsson gave in England. But his Schumann concerto in Oxford the other evening was not special, and Brahms 1 in the autumn is not an attractive proposition. He is best by himself, and certainly not playing the sublime Schubert duo with such an unsympathetic partner. Such a shame that he seems to have lost his way so young.
Or pehaps he never has or will find his way?
I’d pay twice that in theatre land for half the entertainment. This is a ticket well worth the price! I wish I were in London!!!!
I fail to see significance here. I paid up to €295 for tickets at the Lucerne Festival for both orchestral and soloist concerts last year. So what’s the issue?
Most £160 seats already sold! People will pay if they feel it’s worthwhile!
I’m saving money already and yes I will go! Not for the music of course, I don’t like that classical stuff anyway, but to witness such courageous young woman to get into that dull stiff field with such fantastic outfits! And a different one every time! And the shoes! The unbridled fantasy and creativity I find fascinating, and how she managed to turn those concerts into happenings that people can really relate to. This is something that not enough people understand.
Sally
i attended her Bilbao recital, it was 60€ for the best seats.
Out of curiosity, I just took a look at a couple of Taylor Swift concerts on stubhub – a resale outfit admittedly. Single seat prices for presumably great seats in a huge stadium were over $6,000 or $7,000. I assume people buy at that price. Even Yuja Wang has far to go – if only fans like me could afford such prices!