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WANG YUJA - LENOX 2011

November 25, 2021 – 5:59 am

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WANG YUJA
Boston Symphony Orchestra - conducted by Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos
Lenox 2011 [no label, 2CD]
Koussevitzky Music Shed, Tanglewood, Lenox, Massachusetts; August 5, 2011. Very good FM broadcast.

Thanks to Zootype for sharing the show at Dime.

Lee Eiseman, classical-scene.com:

We had chosen to come to this concert in large part to hear the twenty-four-year-old Chinese pianist, Yuja Wang. She is something of a phenom. Her appearances on YouTube (especially the Chinese site) are legion, and she has the distinction, with 1.6 million hits, of offering the fastest and most accurate performance on YouTube of The Flight of the Bumblebee. That she is also a poet of the keyboard is evidenced by many other examples.

TFotBB, by the way, is a study unto itself on YouTube. I first experienced it under the tutelage of Viennese pianist Till Fellner who had very definite ideas about which performer should receive a gold star… But Fellner enjoys hearing Rachmaninov and would probably have cheered Yuja Wang’s performance of the romantic master’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.

What was most remarkable was how Wang was able to embody the variations with appropriately varied techniques. She did not demand unusually fast tempi overall, though her rapid passagework had velocity and lapidary perfection indeed. In the famous inverted variation (XVIII) she certainly out-romanticized the composer who was, after all, somewhat buttoned down as a performer. In her louder utterances she actually levitated from her bench, bringing the weight of her entire body to bear on the keyboard. The result was a large tone that also had great beauty. When speed alone is relied upon to produce fff dynamics, tone can become harsh; only the combination of weight and velocity can succeed, as it did here.

She was abetted by the skillful accompaniment of Frühbeck de Burgos, though one would have preferred if he had called for a bit more restraint from the band at times. The musical joke at the end lost much of its intended effect when the bathetic last notes from the piano were covered by the orchestra.

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Front cover picture by Hilary Scott, posted at classical-scene.com.

Lineage:
FM broadcast (WCRB-FM Boston/National Public Radio)(mono tuning) > unnamed FM receiver > Soundforge > WAV> Soundforge (tracked, edited and EQ’d) > WAV > TLH (SBEs repaired, checksum and FLAC-8 files created).
This was recorded from an analog FM broadcast. There may be audible FM hiss and other flaws.

Click on the highlighted tracks to download the MP3s (320 kbps). As far as we can ascertain, these tracks have never been officially released on CD.

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Disc 1
Track 101. radio intro A 2:32
Track 102. radio intro B 0:26

Ludwig van Beethoven - Symphony No. 8 in F, Opus 93
Track 103. I Allegro vivace e con brio [brief radio noise at about 4:40] 10:48
Track 104. II Allegretto scherzando 4:19
Track 105. III Tempo di menuetto 6:22
Track 106. IV Allegro vivace 6:32

Track 107. radio outro 1:07
33 mins

Disc 2
Track 201. radio intro 0:26
Track 202. Sergei Rachmaninoff - Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini in A minor, Opus 43 22:32
Track 203. radio outro 2:02
Track 204. radio intro A 4:01
Track 205. radio intro B 0:15

Richard Strauss - Suite from “Der Rosenkavalier” (”The Knight of the Rose”), Op. 59, TrV 227
Track 206. I 1a. Con moto agitato 3:21
Track 207. II 1b. Un poco lento 5:46
Track 208. III 2.Allegro molto 0:51
Track 209. IV 3.Tempo di Valse, assai comodo da primo 4:54
Track 210. V 9:20
Track 211. radio outro 2:47
57 mins

Yuja Wang - piano

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