Concert Review

For my concert review, I have chosen to review a the NSO debut of Yuja Wang.  She played Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 16.  I originally went to hear the other pieces on the concert, Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin and Stravinsky's full ballet version of The Firebird.  First, the Ravel was well done, featuring small orchestra.  This work was originally a piano suite with six movements, of which he chose to orchestrate four.  The re-orchestration featured the oboe in the first two movements and some other solo winds in the following two.

Second on the concert was the Prokofiev.  I had never heard the work before, nor had I heard of Yuja Wang, but after watching her play that very difficult piece, there's no way I could forget.  She looked more like an expressive conductor than a player, swaying and moving with the music, using gestures to play instead of clumsy finger movements.  Some of the runs in this work, spanning many octaves, were so fast that I thought there would be no way to play them expressively…there's just no time!  But, she again proved to be a true virtuoso, playing the most difficult passages with the ease of ringing a bell for the average person.  The piece finished in an expressive flourish and Ms. Wang's performance was greeted by a standing ovation and several extra trips to the stage to acknowledge the continuing applause.

The Firebird, the final work on the program was, as always, an entertaining classic.  After sitting through the entire ballet version, however, it became quite evident why the Suite was written…the ballet was just too long without the dancers.  It went on and on and on…and on.  That should have made the payoff of the final accented motive pattern passed around the orchestra that much more relieving to get to, but it didn't for some reason.  Still a wonderful work of musical art, I'd rather hear (or play) the Firebird Suite any day.