The Vienna Recital

Few pianists would link together in a concert programme Beethoven’s “Hunt” Sonata with works by Glass, Kapustin, Ligeti and Scriabin. Yuja Wang does precisely that, however, in this April 2022 recital from Vienna. The results are riveting. Wang’s sovereign technique imparts a magical clarity to the shifting strands of Ligeti’s Étude No. 6 (“Autumn in Warsaw”), and a scintillating, zig-zag energy to his Etude No. 13 (“The Devil’s Staircase”). A similar diablerie fuels Wang’s glinting take on Kapustin’s Jazz Prelude No. 10 and “Lavapiés” from Albéniz’s Iberia. Yet, nowhere are her formidably sharp interpretive reflexes more obvious than in the quirky twists and razor-edge dynamic contrasts of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 18, which sounds startlingly modern in Wang’s interpretation. A meditative account of Brahms’ Intermezzo No. 3 in C-Sharp Minor shows Wang’s poetic side, and the “Mélodie" from Gluck’s opera Orphée et Eurydice provides an ethereal conclusion to this gripping album.