Enjoy A Passionate Piano Solo

Pianist Yuja Wang is a phenomenon. Her virtuosity, artistic expressiveness and presence place her among the international elite. She delivers formidable technical and physical performances every time. But Wang does not accomplish these feats solo: her ensemble playing with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra is magical. “The precision of a Swiss watch and a pure and simple pleasure… like a bite of chocolate.” This is how this global star enjoys the music of Maurice Ravel. Wang shines in the Piano Concerto in G major, attacking it with a whiplash that makes the work emblematic from the first measure. Ravel wrote this concerto after a brief tour of America, where he had clearly pricked up his ears, because the groove and jazzy rhythms of the third movement recall George Gershwin. In the wonderful second movement, Ravel recalls his youth in the French Basque country. The grandeur and playfulness of Gershwin’s early 20th-century Broadway also resonate in Wang’s latest addition to the program: Soviet composer-pianist Alexander Tsfasman’s Jazz Suite for Piano and Orchestra.

Please buy the tickets in advance, they are going out fast.