Wang simply superb, as usual
All Yuja Wang performances are astonishing, but some are more astonishing than others.
Wang made one of her frequent visits to Davies Symphony Hall on Thursday, Sept. 29, to give a blazing, expressively fervent performance of Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony. It was a showing of such nimble athleticism and grace that you might think she’d been eating her Wheaties — if not for the fact that she pretty much always sounds like this.
The startling thing about Wang’s artistry, no matter the repertoire, is her ability to combine feats of superhuman technical agility with an equally dazzling degree of emotional depth. The traditional reckoning is that those two gifts are supposed to represent a tradeoff — you can opt for icy technical perfection or for communicative directness at the expense of a few wrong notes.
With Wang, that’s a false dichotomy. Her playing has everything.
Shostakovich’s concerto offered as good a vehicle as you could wish for the display of those virtues. Written as a showcase for the composer’s own gifts as a performing virtuoso, it abounds with pianistic razzle-dazzle — breathless scales and figuration, shimmery glissandos up and down the keyboard, great fistfuls of notes crammed together.
But the central slow movement also finds the composer at his most tenderly reflective, offering the pianist a chance to rhapsodize with soulful introspection.
And not just the pianist, because even though the piece is billed as a piano concerto, it’s actually a formal oddball. It includes a prominent role for solo trumpet as well, not quite on a par with the piano but close. The result lies somewhere between the traditional solo concerto and a full-on double concerto like those of Mozart and Brahms.
Mark Inouye, the Symphony’s superb principal trumpeter, was more than just a partner to Wang in this performance — at certain junctures, he seemed to be spurring her on to even greater peaks of eloquence. His contribution to the slow movement, a long, dark-hued and muted soliloquy, was breathtaking in its shapely insinuation; in the finale, his ferociously bright attack seemed to lead both Wang and the orchestra galloping into the concerto’s concluding moments.
If the Shostakovich was the evening’s high point, there were other rewards as well, beginning with the world premiere of Bright Sheng’s “Dream of the Red Chamber” Overture. This seven-minute orchestral showpiece, commissioned by the Symphony, is not actually the opening strains of the opera that also had its premiere this season at the San Francisco Opera, but it’s built out of the musical elements in that score.
For those who’ve heard the opera, those elements were instantly recognizable — a brass-heavy orchestral crash to open the proceedings, some lushly sweeping melodies, a bustling string figure punctuated by percussion, and more. To hear these episodes packed together into a short span rather than supported by a full dramatic framework felt a bit jumbled. But each one proved telling on its own, and the orchestra delivered the score with colorful vibrancy.
After intermission came two more orchestral scores with dramatic underpinnings, both by Stravinsky. “The Song of the Nightingale” bristled with instrumental effects, and there were fine individual contributions from Inouye (again), flutist Tim Day and concertmaster Alexander Barantschik.
But the work’s formal flow felt choppier and more disconnected than usual, as Thomas worked to get the individual moments to cohere. There was better luck with the composer’s “Firebird” Suite, which took flight on the strength of individual solos and robust orchestral execution alike.
It was a showing of such nimble athleticism and grace that you might think she’d been eating her Wheaties — if not for the fact that she pretty much always sounds like this.