United States ‘Yuja Wang Plays Tchaikovsky’: Yuja Wang (piano), Cleveland Orchestra / Franz Welser-Möst (conductor). Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center, Cleveland, 23.3.2025. (MSJ)
Tchaikovsky – Piano Concerto No.1 in B-flat minor, Op.23; Symphony No.5 in E minor, Op.64
Encores:
Glass – Etude No.6
Tchaikovsky – III. Allegro molto vivace from Symphony No.6 (trans. Feinberg)
If there is one part of classical-music fandom that frustrates me, it is the automatic backlash that kicks in when someone excels in a particular area. For instance, Leonard Bernstein was extraordinarily effective at conjuring emotion through music, but some people attacked him for precisely that. Jascha Heifetz was startlingly precise, and some denounced him for that. A popular target for the backlashers today is Yuja Wang. Anyone paying the slightest bit of attention will realize that she has a dazzlingly virtuosic technique but, because she can play with great speed and pointed force, detractors claim that Wang is nothing but a ‘fast and loud’ player. I went to this concert featuring Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No.1 determined to test that notion.
Turns out, it is nonsense. The thing that stands out most in my memory is how much Wang’s interpretation revolves around delicacy, with breathtaking transition points. Sure, there were moments of flash, but even then volume and velocity were incidental to what the music was doing, where it was going. For instance, the lush introduction to the concerto is famous for its huge chords, but what Wang was more interested in was weighting the bass notes in the piano’s left-hand part to steer the whole passage harmonically. While she inflected a touch of rubato here and there, it was just enough to contrast with conductor Franz Welser-Möst’s characteristically straightforward accompaniment. Compare it to, say, the tempo tug-of-war in the classic recording by Gary Graffman on the piano with George Szell conducting the Cleveland Orchestra, and this performance came across as considerably more unified.
Defying the detractors, Wang’s tempo for the main body of the first movement was not wildly fast, though it was precipitous enough to make the double-octave passage near the end almost as thrilling as the more famous one to come in the finale. The delicacy of the slow movement was joined with a sense of fresh alertness which kept a sense of momentum throughout, and the central scherzando passage was lithe and wondrous, only coming to full weight at the climax. The finale took off at a terrific pace, but what was more notable was that Wang didn’t just repeat the main rhythmic gesture, she shaped the repetitions into coherent paragraphs, the same sort of shaping that Welser-Möst brought to the orchestra’s part. Wang was not afraid to lean into certain passages to make sure the orchestra kept close in her wake, leading to an irresistible build-up to the coda. The famous double-octave passage was explosive but masterfully shaped. In short, it was a performance of the highest quality, and Wang deserves acknowledgement as one of the titans of our age.
That status was proven by the audience’s refusal to let her go after just one encore, a mesmerizing account of Philip Glass’s Etude No.6, played at a tempo Glass himself could only dream of. Returning to the Tchaikovsky theme of the evening, Wang’s second encore was a ferocious transcription by Feinberg of the third movement of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No.6. Only slightly abridged from the original, it is a sizable virtuoso showpiece that makes the concerto look easy. It is such a monster, I am not sure if note-for-note perfection in performance is even possible, but Wang came frighteningly close. It was the only moment of the evening where she played to her reputation as a super-virtuoso. The main takeaway was delicacy and alert awareness of flow.
Those same traits illuminated Franz Welser-Möst’s Tchaikovsky Symphony No.5. Familiar from having been featured on tours last year and this year, one might have feared it would be a performance on autopilot, but what we heard was a confidently assured presentation of a lithe and lucid approach to the piece that strips away traditional encrustations having little to do with the notes Tchaikovsky actually wrote. What emerges is a fresh, poised and bright-eyed Tchaikovsky, music that actually sounds like it could be from a composer who claimed that his own favorite was Mozart.
Principal horn Nathaniel Silberschlag unfurled the theme of the slow movement with gorgeous, expressive sound, almost vocal yet completely devoid of any exaggeration. The principal winds likewise did not ‘perform’ emotion, they simply delivered it directly, without any grandstanding. The brass had noble moments throughout, with Welser-Möst saving their peak power for the climaxes. One particularly noteworthy moment was the perfect balance of the muted horn notes in the background of the third-movement waltz. Many performances lose them in the orchestra texture, while some performances exaggerate them too much. They were balanced perfectly here, quietly knifing through the texture like ghosts lurking in the shadowy gallery outside a ballroom while couples danced. The finale was slightly broader in tempo than it used to be but without loss of focus, for more energy was coiled into the strings’ vehement themes.
Mark Sebastian Jordan