Andreas Ottensamer BLUE HOUR - MENDELSSOHN EDITION

 

BLUE HOUR - MENDELSSOHN EDITION

 

Yuja Wang / Gustavo Dudamel / Los Angeles Philharmonic JOHN ADAMS Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?

                                   MUST THE DEVIL HAVE ALL THE GOOD TUNES?

Berliner Philharmoniker / Sir Simon Rattle THE ASIA TOUR

                                                                THE ASIA TOUR

Gautier Capuçon / Yuja Wang FRANCK - CHOPIN

                                                                 FRANCK - CHOPIN

Wiener Philharmoniker / Franz Welser-Möst THE PEACE CONCERT VERSAILLES

A setlist like no other, a never-heard-before compilation of deeply moving musical pieces highlighting numerous aspects of war and peace. This is how the Wiener Philharmoniker, led by Franz Welser-Möst and supported by an all-star line-up, among them singular pianist Yuja Wang, tackled the highly anticipated concert in commemoration of the end of the 1st world war. 100 years after the first of the devastating humane catastrophes of the 20th century officially ended at Versailles, a group of inspired musicians gathered at the historic site for a concert that will live on in the memory of those who have seen or heard it.

Wiener Philharmoniker / Gustavo Dudamel / Yuja Wang 2019 SUMMER NIGHT CONCERT

Central to the programme of the Vienna Philharmonic’s 2019 Summer Night Concert is a musical history of the United States of America: the works that are heard this year were composed in or for the USA, while also constituting links with the Viennese musical tradition. At the same time the concert venue – the historic park at Schönbrunn Palace – is celebrating a double jubilee this year. It was 450 years ago that the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II bought the land and the buildings on it and a century ago that Schönbrunn became the property of the newly founded Austrian Republic. This is the second time in the orchestra’s history that the Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel has been in charge of a Summer Night Concert – he first did the honours in 2012. The soloist is the Beijing-born pianist Yuja Wang, who is making her debut with the Vienna Philharmonic in Vienna – she has already appeared with the orchestra on tour.

Andreas Ottensamer / Yuja Wang BLUE HOUR

Born in 1989, Andreas Ottensamer comes from an Austro-Hungarian family of musicians and was drawn to music early, receiving his first piano lessons when he was four. At the age of ten he began studying the cello at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, then changed to the clarinet under Johann Hindlerin in 2003.

Andreas Ottensamer gained his first orchestral experience as a deputy in the orchestra of the Vienna State Opera and the Vienna Philharmonic and as a member of the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester. In 2009 he interrupted his Harvard studies to become a scholar of the Orchestra Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic.  He is now the principal clarinettist of the Berlin Philharmonic.

A highlight of this season will be the Europakonzert of the Berlin Philharmonic, in which Andreas Ottensamer will perform Carl Maria von Weber’s Clarinet Concerto No.1 under Mariss Jansons.

Yuja Wang THE BERLIN RECITAL

Her fingers dance over the piano keys with such breathtaking speed that some say “Yuja Wang must have more than two hands” (Die Zeit). After early lessons, the Chinese pianist was accepted at the conservatory in Beijing when she was only nine years old. She went to Canada at the age of 14, and a year later moved to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where she studied for five years with piano legend Gray Graffman: “I learned to look closely and to search for the intentions of the composer in the musical text.” First awards at international competitions followed her European debut in 2003, and she made her US debut one year later. The decisive boost to her career came when Yuja Wang took over the solo part in Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto in Boston in 2007, standing in for an indisposed Martha Argerich. Since then, her perfect playing and charismatic stage presence have enthralled audiences all over the world: “The arrival of Chinese-born pianist Yuja Wang on the musical scene is an exhilarating and unnerving development. To listen to her in action is to re-examine whatever assumptions you may have had about how well the piano can actually be played.” (San Francisco Chronicle).

In 2013, she made her Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation debut with a recital and has been a regular guest ever since – including on no less than three occasions this season: as a chamber musician, as a guest of the orchestral concerts and with this piano recital. From her extensive repertoire which ranges from Classical to Contemporary, Yuja Wang has chosen, preludes and études by such diverse composers as Sergei Rachmaninov and György Ligeti for this programme. She also plays Alexander Scriabin’s tenth sonata, the last he wrote and which is characterised by its ecstatic mood, and Sergei Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 8, composed during the Second World War, which Sviatoslav Richter described as “the richest of all of Prokofiev’s sonatas. It contains a whole human life with all its contradictions”.

Yuja Wang THE BERLIN RECITAL ENCORES

Yuja Wang is one of those exceedingly rare pianists to have become a major international presence by her 21st birthday. Having performed by then with such orchestras as the New York, St. Petersburg, and China philharmonics, and the Chicago, San Francisco, and Houston symphony orchestras, she transitioned almost overnight from an unknown but hugely talented teenager to arguably the most famous Chinese-born female pianist. And with a multi-disc recording contract with DG and a schedule of more than 100 concerts yearly, she is one of the busiest on the globe, as well. While she has had success in competitions, Wang owes her sudden fame mostly to her role as a fill-in for superstar pianists who cancel on short notice. Most famously, Wang substituted for Martha Argerich in the Tchaikovsky First with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in March 2007. The reviewers were ecstatic in their praise for her performance. The following year she substituted for Murray Perahia on a concert tour that garnered lavish critical acclaim from Boston to San Francisco. Wang's repertory is broad and quite eclectic, taking in works by Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Scriabin, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, and others.

VERBIER FESTIVAL 25 Years of Excellence

This limited 4-CD edition of previously unreleased live recordings from the Verbier Festival celebrates the festival’s 25th anniversary.
Featuring admired DG artists as Martha Argerich, Yevgeny Kissin, Mikhail Pletnev, Bryn Terfel, Daniil Trifonov, Yuja Wang and conductors Valery Gergiev, Gustavo Dudamel, Kent Nagano and Kurt Masur in performances of both core classics and lesser-known works from the orchestral, concert, chamber and operatic repertoires.
Since 1994 the Verbier Festival has transformed a small Swiss Alpine resort into a unique hothouse for musicians to explore new repertoire and new partnerships, always with revelatory results. Founder Martin T:son Engström’s ambitious idea to create a summer festival in the Swiss Alps with a resident youth orchestra and an academy has for 25 years encouraged musical excellence and created a platform for young musicians to learn from the world’s finest artists, as well as offering audiences a dynamic, music-centered experience. A quarter century after the first festival, Verbier’s magic continues unabated and surely will do for years to come.

“I’ve been coming to Verbier since I was 21 and it was there that all these fantastic musicians who lived in my head became real. Verbier is so magical for me – it always feels like coming home, or a fun vacation with my closest friends.” Yuja Wang

Yuja Wang RAVEL

Ravel’s music is, quite simply, unique – and pianist Yuja Wang knows why. “In my opinion,” she says, “it has the exactness of a Swiss clock mechanism, but layered on top of that, it is about pleasure, pure and simple!” 

With their combination of jazz rhythms, sensual beauty and spiky vitality, Ravel’s two piano concertos illustrate her point to perfection, as will be heard on her new album – to be released in October. It also features the original piano solo version of Fauré’s Ballade in F sharp major op. 19. Wang recorded all three works in the spring of this year – in the concertos she was accompanied by the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, the ensemble with which she made her European debut in 2003, aged just 15, and with which she has just spent a season as Artist-in-Residence. On the podium for this new recording was stellar young French conductor Lionel Bringuier, who was unanimously awarded first prize and the Prix du Public at the 49th Besançon Young Conductors Competition in 2005, and went on to be named Chief Conductor and Music Director of the Tonhalle in 2012, at the age of 26. He has now set out to record all of Ravel’s orchestral music with the Tonhalle for Deutsche Grammophon.

Wang and Bringuier have worked together often since she played Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra under his direction in Stockholm in 2008. After their Ravel project – Wang’s first venture into French repertoire on disc – they will be joining forces again in November this year to perform Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9, “Jeunehomme”, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in LA.

Ravel’s celebrated Piano Concerto in G major and the less familiar Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D major are both heavily influenced by jazz – the composer had undertaken a four-month concert tour of North America in 1928, during which he took in the jazz clubs of both Harlem (in the company of George Gershwin) and New Orleans. He then worked on the two concertos concurrently, between 1929 and 1931, and originally planned to give the first performance of the G major work himself. In the event, however, it was Marguerite Long who gave the premiere, under the baton of Ravel, in part because the composer was focused on completing the Concerto for the Left Hand, commissioned by Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm during World War I. The two works are very different in character, the D major Concerto often dark and brooding, the G major more playful, offering a Mozartian clarity and drawing on the translucent style of Saint-Saëns – as, incidentally, does Fauré’s Ballade. The latter is a work for which Yuja Wang has a particular affection because, in its orchestral version, it was the first work she ever played with an orchestra.

Ever since her sensational debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in March 2007, Yuja Wang has been building an extraordinary career, giving concerts with the world’s leading orchestras and regularly joining them on tours of the Americas, Asia and Europe. Since 2009 Deutsche Grammophon has released six recordings with her, most recently an album of concertos by Rachmaninov and Prokofiev (“Wang is a force of nature” – South Florida Classical Review.)

Yuja Wang will soon be appearing with the San Francisco Symphony in its home city before travelling with the orchestra to the Edinburgh Festival and the BBC Proms in London, as well as to festivals in Wiesbaden, Bucharest, Lucerne, Luxembourg, Amsterdam and Paris. In February she makes her debut with the Vienna Philharmonic, performing Mozart’s “Jeunehomme” under Valery Gergiev in both Munich and Paris. Other highlights of the upcoming season include a tour of Asia with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Gustavo Gimeno (in Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 2), a solo recital at Carnegie Hall in May and, in June, another reunion with Bringuier, for performances of both Ravel concertos with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.

With her singular musicality and stylish appearance on stage, Yuja Wang has been fêted not just in the music world but in the pages of international fashion magazines. She is a Steinway Artist and a brand ambassador for Rolex. A video of her playing The Flight of the Bumblebee on YouTube has been viewed almost four million times. As an internet sensation with an immense following, she will bring the vibrant music of Ravel to a whole new audience. (Deutsche Grammophon)

Leonidas Kavakos & Yuja Wang BRAHMS The Violin Sonatas

Leonidas Kavakos and Yuja Wang here give a hearty, if rather cold, performance of Brahms’ much-loved violin sonatas. Wang has proven her virtuoso skills with her previous recital CDs, but this is the first recording she’s made of chamber music. It’s concerning, then, that this release feels a little like star players working well together, but not connecting as deeply as befits the repertoire.

 More could be made of many of the most ethereal moments in the music (some of them seem to pass without notice), and there’s an almost palpable sense of relief from the players when the big tunes kick in. Take, for example, the piano’s turn at the theme partway through the first movement of the Violin Sonata in G, accompanied by a delicate pizzicato violin. In other recordings, this return to the theme is a hushed and delicate remembrance, almost magical in its simplicity. Here, it’s merely pretty. 

Similar issues arise in the other sonatas. The A Major’s grazioso third movement sounds wooden, with none of the grace and lightness of touch that, for example, Arthur Grumiaux and György Sebo˝k give it. This is very heavy Brahms, then, played solidly and weightily. Kavakos and Wang fare better in Brahms’ more intense moments, with plenty of muscle in the C Minor scherzo from the collaborative F.A.E. Sonata. The disc is closed with a rather anticlimactic arrangement of the famous Wiegenlied, played serviceably. (Paul Ballam-Cross)

Yuja Wang / Claudio Abbado / Mahler Chamber Orchestra RACHMANINOV

Recording these piano concertos by Rachmaninov came as a surprise and delight to Yuja Wang, and was a choice spurred on by Claudio Abbado: “I'd worked with him before, but not in these concertos. He plays with very few soloists these days, so it was a particular honour - I'd happily have played anything he wanted me to play."
“I like really to grasp the flow of the Russian soul through Russian literature and understand the emotional ideals, and to touch on that during a live concert is quite difficult. In the Second Piano Concerto the big challenge is projecting myself: the writing is fairly transparent but the melody is overpowering, and cutting through the texture in order to be heard isn't easy. It's a challenge to bring out the harmonies, and the legatos are very special. At many points in this concerto, the piano is almost an accompaniment to the orchestra. The Mahler Chamber Orchestra were wonderful to work with: they listen to each other so well, and they're all really young, about my age. I think the excitement of the live concert is truly present in the recording."
The genesis of Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 2 is almost as legendary as the music itself. Severely depressed after his Symphony No. 1 had been panned at its premiere in 1897, the young Rachmaninov found himself unable to set pen to manuscript paper for two years. On the advice of his cousins, he consulted Dr. Nikolai Dahl, a specialist in neuropsychotherapy who used hypnosis to build up Rachmaninov's confidence towards beginning a new concerto that would be “excellent". The composer indeed emerged ready to set to work with renewed energy, sketching out the piece during visits to the Crimea and Italy in 1900; he gave the world premiere himself in Moscow on 9 November 1901. The piece's immediate acclaim duly established him as one of the most exciting composers of his day.
Yuja Wang has drawn considerable inspiration from Rachmaninov's own interpretation of the concerto, which is controlled and classical as others can be extrovert and passionate: “Instead of sounding very broad in what you might expect to be huge lyrical moments, his sound remains amazingly transparent," she says.
By the time Rachmaninov began his Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini his fame was universal, but his life had changed radically. In 1917 he and his wife fled the Russian Revolution, travelling first to Sweden and then to the USA. In Russia he had pursued a vocation primarily as a composer; in the West, though, the need for income propelled him into an international career as a concert pianist. His time for composition was consequently reduced, but the works he did produce showed increasing sophistication and originality and the Rhapsody is no exception.
It dates from 1934 when Rachmaninov was living in Switzerland, near Lake Lucerne. The theme is from No. 24 from Paganini's Caprices for violin, a set of virtuoso variations so difficult that it contributed to Paganini's being associated in the public imagination with the devil himself. Rachmaninov used the theme as the basis for a series of twenty-four variations plus introduction and coda, ingeniously combining the format with that of a three-movement concerto.
The first movement is the substantial, dizzyingly varied section from the start to Variation 15. First, only the barest outline is heard; Paganini's theme comes into focus with the entry of the piano, which soon carries matters away into the fantastical skitterings of the first few variations. The “second subject" appears with the sixth, more reflective variation, and in the seventh Rachmaninov introduces the plainchant “Dies irae" - a reference that appears in many of his works almost as a signature motif.
After a concluding climax in Variation 15, the “slow movement" ensues, building through the expectant No. 16 and nocturnal perambulations of No. 17 to the work's most celebrated transformation of the Paganini melody in No. 18, progressing to a soaring grandeur on full orchestra. No. 19 plunges into a scherzo finale replete with wit, jazziness and a bedazzlement of virtuosity, though the “Dies irae" is never far away. Finally the music evaporates as if in a puff of smoke.
Yuja Wang is full of enthusiasm for this lithe and athletic work. “It's my favourite of the Rachmaninov works for piano and orchestra," she declares. “It's a red-hot work - it suits young people my age because it's so emotional. It's very cleverly written and shows all the different sides of Rachmaninov. There's so much variety in it, so many colours: I think that's where his genius lies, in the invention of all these characteristics that explore everything the piano can do." (Jessica Duchen)

Yuja Wang / Gustavo Dudamel RACHMANINOV # 3 - PROKOFIEV # 2

Deutsche Grammophon's dramatic pairing of Sergei Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor with Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor makes this CD a brilliant showcase for pianist Yuja Wang and maestro Gustavo Dudamel, two of the biggest sensations on the label. Wang previously released Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and the Piano Concerto No. 2 with Claudio Abbado conducting the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, an ensemble that seemed nearly ideal for accompanying her delicate and often intimate style of playing. However, the usually robust sound of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela is reined in somewhat on this recording of the Third, if not to be more subdued for Wang's playing, then perhaps to control the effect of Rachmaninov's thick orchestral writing. For whatever reason, Wang's playing is clear and generally well-balanced in the audio mix, though there is some artificial boosting of the volume. In terms of clarity and orchestral density, the Prokofiev Second is a different matter entirely, for the solo part is always audible, and the accompaniment is, for the most part, quite transparent. Wang is shown to better advantage here, and Dudamel has more options to work with, so this exciting performance really deserves top billing, despite the overwhelming popularity of the Rachmaninov work. (Blair Sanderson)