Although Yuja Wang's recital program Sunday at Herbst Theatre was not the longest I have heard, it was definitely one of the more technically demanding and emotionally intense. The 20-year-old virtuoso played three sonatas in a row: Liszt’s monumental B minor; Scriabin’s Sonata-Fantasia, Op. 19; and Bartók’s Sonata from 1926. These were followed by Ravel’s finger-breaking arrangement of his orchestral work La Valse, and were bookended by the dizzying pyrotechnics of Ligeti’s two études at the beginning, and Rachmaninov-Cziffra’s insanely difficult transcription of The Flight of the Bumblebee (Rimsky-Korsakov) as a concluding encore and a little finishing touch.
Most of this potentially thorny program was delivered with remarkable ease and unfailing charm. From the opening crystalline twirls of Ligeti's études, Wang put the audience under her spell with her controlled, precise pianism, which was both warm and richly colored.
I can't say, however, that everything she played was equally spellbinding. The Liszt sonata is always problematic, not only because it's so difficult to play, but also because of its sprawling dimensions. In his determination to solve "the problem of sonata after Beethoven," Liszt conflated several movements into one, creating a cross between a fantasy and a sonata that persists uninterruptedly for 30 minutes. The architectonics here are mind-boggling for the performer and taxing for the listener.
Eduard Hanslick, the most influential music critic of his time, said in 1881 on hearing the sonata: "Anyone who has heard this and finds it beautiful is beyond help." When the 20-year-old Brahms visited Liszt for the first time, the maestro treated the young colleague to an impromptu performance of his newly composed Grand Sonata. Brahms fell asleep halfway through Liszt's performance, which, needless to say, did little to help the aspiring composer establish a friendly relationship with Liszt.
Anatole Leikin is Professor of Music at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He has published in various musicological journals and essay collections worldwide and recorded piano works of Scriabin, Chopin, and Cope. His critically acclaimed books The Performing Style of Alexander Scriabin and The Mystery of Chopin's Préludes were recently published by Ashgate Publishing (UK) and reissued by Routledge (UK). Dr. Leikin also serves as an editor for The Complete Chopin — A New Critical Edition (Peters, UK).