An Every Two-Week Look-Back at Yuja's Early and Earlier Endeavors.
On 17 and 18 December 2014, Yuja performed Ravel's Piano Concerto in G major with the NHK Symphony Orchestra conducted by Charles Dutoit in Tokyo, Japan at the Suntory Hall. In "Looking Back With Yuja No. 196", first posted on 12 April 2023, we featured the 17 December performance of the concerto, and that post is repeated below.
Just A Musical Thought.
Simply the best pianist in the world today! …(IMHO)
Twenty-Two minutes for Ravel's piano concerto in G major.
Number One Hundred-Ninety-Six in a Yuja Wang Series.
This amazing piano concerto by Ravel is among those listed by Classicfm.com as the "Twenty Best Piano Concertos Of All Time." Ravel was traveling on a piano tour in the US in 1928 and was taken by the abundance of jazz he encountered during his visit. The jazz influence is abundant throughout his concerto. He remarked that "The most captivating part of jazz is its rich and diverting rhythm. ... Jazz is a very rich and vital source of inspiration for modern composers and I am astonished that so few Americans are influenced by it." Later, Ravel claimed the idea for the melody of the opening theme for his concerto came to him during a train ride from Oxford to London. He completed the work between 1929 and 1931, and it was premiered on 14 January 1932, in a well-received performance by the French pianist Marguerite Marie-Charlotte Long with the Orchestre Lamoureux, and Ravel conducting. We earlier covered another performance of the concerto by Yuja in June 2016 in Rome with No. 126 in this series, and this performance was a year and a half earlier in Tokyo.
Thanks to Peter Chen and the Yuja Wang Archives for preserving this and other videos of her performances and interviews. All pics are from screenshots from the video of the 2014 concert in Tokyo.
Ravel ~ Piano Concerto in G major, Yuja with the NHK Symphony Orchestra conducted by Charles Dutoit, Tokyo, Japan, Suntory Hall, 17 December 2014
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