FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHTS: Yuja Wang Encore

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Yuja Wang (Chinese: 王羽佳; pinyin: Wáng Yǔjiā;[1] born February 10, 1987) is a Chinese classical pianist. She was born in Beijing, began studying piano there at age six, and went on to study at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. By the age of 21, she was already an internationally recognized concert pianist, giving recitals around the world. She has a recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon. Wang tours internationally, and has received critical praise for her performances. Yuja Wang lives in New York City.
In 2008, Wang toured the U.S. with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields led by Sir Neville Marriner. In 2009, she performed as a soloist with the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, led by Michael Tilson Thomas at Carnegie Hall. Wang performed with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra conducted by Claudio Abbado in Beijing, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Spain and in London, and the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.
In 2009, Wang performed and recorded Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto in G Minor with Kurt Masur at the Verbier Festival, accompanied by Kirill Troussov, David Aaron Carpenter, Maxim Rysanov, Sol Gabetta, and Leigh Mesh. Her performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee” is featured on the Verbier Festival highlights DVD from 2008.
In 2012, Wang toured with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Zubin Mehta in Israel and the U.S., with a performance at Carnegie Hall in New York in September.
Wang toured Asia in November 2012 with the San Francisco Symphony and its conductor Michael Tilson Thomas.
In February 2013, Wang performed and recorded Prokofiev’s Concerto No. 2 and Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 3 with Conductor Gustavo Dudamel and the Venezuelan Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar. Also in 2013, Wang’s recital tour of Japan culminated with her recital debut at Tokyo’s Suntory Hall.
Wang made her Berlin Philharmonic debut in May 2015, performing Sergei Prokofiev’s 2nd Piano Concerto with Conductor Paavo Järvi. The performance was broadcast live through the orchestra’s Digital Concert Hall.
In a departure from her previously predominantly Russian repertoire, she played Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9, the Jeunehomme, in February 2016 at David Geffen Hall in New York on four successive nights with Charles Dutoit conducting, then, in her debut with the Vienna Philharmonic under Valery Gergiev in Munich and Paris. In March 2016, Wang played for three nights in Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting. In a recital at Carnegie Hall in May 2016, she played Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 29, the Hammerklavier, and two Brahms Ballades and Robert Schumann’s Kreisleriana.
The piano is a keyboard instrument with strings struck by wooden hammers coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using its keyboard, which is a row of keys (small levers) touched by the performer with the fingers and thumbs of both hands, causing the hammers to strike the strings. It was invented in Italy by Bartolomeo Cristofori around the year 1700.
The English word piano is a shortened form of the Italian pianoforte, derived from clavicembalo col piano e forte (“key cimbalom with soft and loud”). Variations in volume (loudness) are produced in response to the pianist’s touch (pressure on the keys): the greater the pressure, the greater the force of the hammer hitting the strings, and the louder the sound produced and the stronger the attack. Invented in the 1700s, the fortepiano was the first keyboard instrument to allow gradations of volume and tone according to how forcefully or softly the player presses or strikes the keys, unlike the pipe organ and harpsichord.
A piano has a protective case surrounding the soundboard and metal strings, strung under great tension on a heavy metal frame. Pressing one or more keys causes a hammer made of wood or plastic, padded with firm felt, to strike the strings. The hammer then rebounds from the strings, which vibrate at their resonant frequency. The vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that amplifies the sound by coupling the acoustic energy to the air. When the key is released, a damper stops the string’s vibration, ending the sound.
Most notes have three strings, except for the bass, which graduates from one to two. The strings are sounded when keys are pressed or struck, and silenced by dampers when the hands are lifted from the keyboard. Although an acoustic piano has strings, it is usually classified as a percussion instrument rather than as a stringed instrument, because the strings are struck rather than plucked (as with a harpsichord or spinet); in the Hornbostel–Sachs system of instrument classification, pianos are considered chordophones. There are two main types of piano: the grand piano and the upright …
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