SF Interviews Piano Sensation Yuja Wang

What can you tell us about that piano concerto?
Yuja: I've been playing it a lot in the past two years, with different orchestras. When I first heard it, I guess it was different, I did not very get what it was, it was a very dark piece. When I started to learn it, I was incredulous. The more I play it, the more beauty I find in there, everytime I perform it. It's the first time I'm going to play with a different conductor, not Charles Dutoit, but Michael Tilson Thomas, so I'm very looking forward to find something new in it.

Did you listen to Prokofiev's own playing, there are recording of him playing different pieces?

Yuja: Yes, there is a recording of the 3rd concerto, and I heard it on YouTube. He's a great pianist, really. But the way he plays, it's very straightforward, there is so much other stuff that I find he is not showing in his own playing.

There is a lot more to it than how he played it. It was all very fast, he wrote the piece and then he played it. He was very young, and I thought there was more to it than what he played.

So he was only scratching the surface! The San Francisco Symphony recently announced a new on line community (where you can for instance field questions for tonight post-concert Q&A with Mason and Yuja right now). What do you expect from that?

Yuja: I guess more interest, more curiosity, more togetherness of musicians, and more interest for classical music. It's cool, it's like a youtube that belongs to the symphony.

In you profile, you list Alfred Cortot as your favorite musician. That's pretty obscure, isn't it?

Yuja: About Cortot, I like the older style, I guess it's the poetic part that really grasps me, the sound that he phrases, how he listens for harmonies. Also, a lot of Chopin and Liszt I play, it is very inspiring to see how he thinks about music, and I was quite admiring that.

Regarding your performance with the YouTube Symphony orchestra, what's your take on it?

Yuja: The whole things is very new, and nobody knows what's going to happen with it. The idea was to show how broad a variety classical music has. So it's a
3 hour program and everyone has only 5 mn. The idea is cool, and I just wish everyone would play longer. It's fun, but it's a concert for short attention span people. It's fun, but you never get to the depth of each piece.

It was pretty chaotic. Actually, after me, it was Mason Bates piece, and I see he's going to play the whole thing [this] week.

Is his piece a good lead in for the Prokofiev concerto?

Yuja: I love that piece. I guess he was the youngest composer at the whole concert. It's fun. He turned Carnegie Hall into like a club, with visuals and DJ. I can't wait to hear the whole thing in San Francisco this week.

You twitter... what kind of feedback you get from that?

Yuja: Twitter is a new facebook thing. Every year there's a new electronic thing that people follow. I actually do facebook more than twitter. It's just something that connects people. I'm alone on the road all the time. It's like a fake reality. Next year it might be some other thing that I'll follow. It's a trendy thing.

You are sometimes described as a protegée of MTT. How did that happen?

Yuja: The whole thing was, it was funny, I was playing the Chinese new year concert with another conductor. We were rehearsing, and he heard me when I was playing Grieg, and then he just decided to play with me. He's very interested in young musicians, and the way how he supports my playing and how he helps me is incredible.

Next I did Ravel with him, also I played with him with the New World Symphony in Miami, and I played the Ravel left hand, which I've never played before and the Stravinsky Capriccio which is rarely played as well. So with him, there is always a process of learning new pieces, and how to interpret them for the first time. And it's always fun time with him. With prokoviev, I played with Dutoit so much, and now there is another way to looking at it. Sometimes people have this connection when they meet each other, and it just kinda clicked when he heard me in the rehearsal that time. And then we decided to play.

People often mention that you are Chinese, or link you to Lang-Lang. How do you feel about that?

Yuja: I don't like how people tag artists with their nationality. I just recorded with Deutsche Grammophon, and people ask me the question, do you feel you are the new generation for artists. I guess I could be the ambassador of new generation. For me, I'm just a new artist that's trying to discover the music, trying to discover what's out there and to put my interpretation into it and all that.

I mean, I know Lang Lang, he's a very inspiring artist, but I don't like to categorize like that. I did not mind in the beginning, but not anymore.