Deutsche Grammophon are really making an effort to establish an online presence. Just today they posted on YouTube a live performance of a large excerpt from a new piano concerto by John Adams written for Yuja Wang and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. This was premiered last year. The excerpt, about twelve minutes long, is most of (?) the first movement.
First off, I have to say, I love, love the dress. I see that Yuja is reading her part from an iPad, which people are doing more and more. I can't figure out how she is turning pages though, as I don't see a foot-switch? If I were to give one of my one sentence catty reviews of the piece I would say it sounds like Bartók spent about a week listening to be-bop and then wrote this concerto. It's a fun, driving piece without a lot of emotional depth or distinctive character. But that's after just one listen of a part of it, so I could be all wet.
Reminds me of an old joke: the English Baroque Concert Society played Vivaldi last night, Vivaldi lost! Yes, there is always the feeling that music and out-and-out competition do not quite go together. But after reading the New Yorker article on Yuja Wang and how splendiferous her Hammerklavier Sonata is, I thought maybe it was time to do some side by side listening. After all, they end the article by asserting Ms Wang's "incomparable musicality." Well, maybe it is not so incomparable after all. Let's see.
The piece in question, one of the great thorny challenges of the piano repertoire, is the Sonata in B flat, op 106 by Beethoven. Here is the original title page:
Now "Hammer-Klavier" in German just means "keyboard with hammers" as opposed to the older harpsichord which is a keyboard with plectra. Beethoven went through a nationalist phase where he began to use German tempo words instead of Italian ones. "Pianoforte" is, of course, an Italian word that points to the ability of the keyboard with hammers instead of plectra to play both soft and loud. In any case, the word "Hammer-Klavier" does not signify that this piece is particularly loud or fierce. It is just a handy nickname like "Moonlight" Sonata or "The Tempest".
In order that the comparisons be fair, you should listen to these clips with the score and NOT watching the videos.
This is quite a long sonata, between forty and fifty minutes depending, so I will just talk about the first movement. I have listened to two performances of the the first movement by each performer. Let's listen first to Yuja Wang at the Verbier Festival this year:
The first movement is about nine minutes long in this performance. Next is the performance at Carnegie Hall this year and the first movement is a little over eleven minutes long:
Then we have Grigory Sokolov in a performance at Munich in 1975. He also takes around eleven minutes for the first movement:
The final one I listened to is on this CD: Sokolov: Schubert/Beethoven and it is the longest of all; the first movement takes almost fourteen minutes. For some inexplicable reason, Blogger won't embed the clip, so just follow the link:
Trust me, it is worth it. This last clip, recorded in a concert in Salzburg in 2013, was just put up on Aug. 23 and so far has had only five views! It has been released on this CD, which I recommend (for the Schubert even more than the Beethoven):
What I would like to do at this point is nothing. I have taken away Yuja Wang's huge publicity advantage and just posted two of her performances followed by two of Grigory Sokolov's and all you have to do is listen to them. Preferably watching the score, not the video! Then you can simply come to your own conclusions! But I am happy to offer a couple of thoughts. It is actually very hard to put one's reactions into words. Often one musician will run into another coming out of a concert and one will simply shake their head while the other returns that with a smile. Yes, we both know what we think and no need to put it into words.
It is hard to put into words because, while I think it is quite clear who is the better performer of this sonata, exactly why is not so accessible in language. For example, while what Yuja Wang does is certainly very accomplished and quite correct: notes in the right places, dynamics tidily done, phrases phrased and so on, it never seems to amount to much. Whereas, Sokolov, even in the early performance which is full of fire and rhythm, always seems to be revealing something: inner voices, that bass line you never noticed, the whole of that odd harmony. And he is always with where the harmony is going. The last performance, the slowest of all, is also the finest. Things that don't make a lot of sense when they are rushed become clear and inevitable at the slower tempo. And yes, there is some controversy about Beethoven's tempo markings.
But really, were you expecting anything else? Really? As a very seasoned Czech violinist said to me as we ran into one another leaving a concert by a young Canadian cellist, "what, you were expecting Rostropovich, maybe?"
I find that these days, with politics and popular music beyond any possibility of satire, that you have to look in some unexpected places to find something really suitable for the satiric treatment. I have an item going in tomorrow's Friday Miscellanea, but it really deserves a stand-alone post. The inspiration is one of those big, beefy New Yorker articles, this one on pianist Yuja Wang. She is a fine pianist, of course, but the 21st century being what it is, the article takes some bizarre twists and turns. For one thing, it is headed by this spectacular photo:
Wow, now that's some photo! Here is how they describe how it was shot:
We were on a below-street-level floor, filled with pianos. The photographer, Pari Dukovic, and his three assistants were placing lights and screens around one of them. They had been there since eight-thirty in the morning (catering and hair and makeup had followed at eleven-thirty). Several of Yuja’s concert dresses were strewn around an alcove serving as a dressing room, among them the blue-green dominatrix gown she had worn to play the “Hammerklavier.” This was the dress finally chosen for the portrait. The hair-and-makeup man, with whom Yuja had established laughing rapport, revised something in her hairdo at her request. “My cheeks are too fat,” she said as she looked in the mirror. She ate a few forkfuls from a plate of salad that her friend Carlos Avila, a pianist who teaches at Juilliard, brought her from the catering table. Then she slipped into the blue-green dress and stepped into stiletto heels, and the photo shoot began. Yuja went to the designated piano, and Dukovic—a handsome young man, with a warm and charming manner—began circling around it, snapping pictures with a handheld camera, as she played bits and pieces of repertoire. At first, she played tentatively and quietly, starting a piece and trailing off—and then she worked her way into a horrible and wonderful pastiche of Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Beethoven, Mozart, Gershwin, Horowitz, Tchaikovsky, all mushed together, playing louder and louder and faster and faster, banging with mischievous demonic force, as Dukovic continued his circling and snapping, like the photographer in the famous orgasmic scene in “Blowup.” Yuja ended with a parodic crescendo as Dukovic shouted, “I love you!” and she burst into laughter.
The arresting photograph that was chosen out of the hundreds, possibly thousands, of pictures Dukovic took of Yuja at the piano and, later, in the first-floor showroom, posed full figure in front of a piano with its lid up, represents her as no concertgoer has ever seen her. The wild disorder of the hair has never been seen in a concert hall. (Yuja’s hair tends to stay in place throughout the most rousing of her performances.) And the foreshortened, oversized hand is an obvious deviation from the consensus we call reality. Will Yuja cringe when she looks at the photograph? Or will she see it as expressive of her impudent, defiant nature and find in it, almost hear in it, an echo of her incomparable musicality?
Heh, heh, heh!
The New Yorker has this gift, when encountering someone they consider to be Really Important, of both sycophantically abasing themselves but at the same time sneaking in little things that tell their readers that This Person is Just Like You, obsessed with little material things like clothes and boyfriends and eating. About one third of the very lengthy article is, I kid you not, about Yuja's dresses. The caption to the photo reads: Yuja is keenly aware—as many soloists affect not to be—that she is being looked at as well as listened to. Oh yes, "as many soloists affect not to be!"
One piece that they do manage to talk briefly about is Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" Sonata that was featured in some of Ms Wang's recent concerts. That reminded me that there is a recent release of that same sonata on a CD by Grigory Sokolov. I immediately started imagining how a photo session with him might have gone.
"Grigory, Grigory! What are you going to wear for the photo session?"
"What do you mean, what am I going to wear? What I always wear in my professional life, white tie and tails."
"Oh no, not again! Grigory, don't you realize, it is the 21st century. We have to be aware of how the audience sees you, relates to you physically."
"Look, I'm a pianist, not a movie star or a body-builder!"
"That is so not the point. We need to up your sales figures and it is just a fact of life nowadays that your sexual persona is extremely important in how you project your image."
"My image?!? Who cares about my image? I'm a somewhat elderly, overweight Russian with weird hair! Once I sit down at the piano, who even notices what I am wearing?"
"The general public, my dear Grigory, the general public!"
"The general public doesn't come to my concerts or buy my CDs--it is the passionate music-lovers who do and I really don't think they want to see me in a slinky dress!"
"You might be right about that, but what about something casual and fashionable? How about something like this from Dolce and Gabbana? Very spiffy!"
"I think not. I think I will stick with exactly what I have been wearing ever since I became a concert pianist. And no, I will not "pose" for the cameras! Just take the damn picture!"
