Yuja Wang SONATAS & ETUDES Chopin / Scriabin / Liszt / Ligeti

"I'm not sure about the Wang part," says Yuja Wang. "Half of China is called Wang. Often I think I'd prefer just to be called Yuja." She tilts her head and laughs. Yuja's laugh seems twice as big as she is. Her diminutive hands can also stretch double the distance that ought to be anatomically possible. There are many anomalies about this young musician. "Tradition?" she asks. "I think it's basically just a teacher who has a bunch of students, and they teach other students. I don't know. No, wait a moment. I think tradition is really a Jungian archetype. Everyone somehow unconsciously knows that there is something that must be done with a piece or in life. It's collective."
Yuja Wang looks fragile, but exudes strength. She combines politeness with confidence, and an ability to listen with impish humour. She has a habit of taking the conversation through unexpected twists. Google Yuja (or Yujia) Wang, and you'll find her on "You Tube" in white frills and flower hair-clips, looking as if she should be in kindergarten, playing Chopin and Liszt with dreamy, clean-cut perfection. That was just a decade ago. Where on earth did the Jungian archetypes come in?
Perhaps she would opine that they had been there all along, but Yuja Wang traces her interest in German philosophy back to her solitary arrival as a 14-year-old in Canada, and the commencement of her studies at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia the following year. "It's a very different culture of music education," she explains. "In China, I was very sure that if I did exactly what my teacher told me to do, I'd be good. But in Canada and the US, nobody told me what to do any more. It became like an investigative process, like detective work. So if I played Liszt, I would read Goethe's Faust and listen to Wagner operas. I'd go to museums. I'm trying to get the cultural background into my subconscious, so that maybe some of it will rub off."


Frédéric Chopin (1810 - 1849)
Piano Sonata No.2 in B flat minor, Op.35
1) 1. Grave - Doppio movimento [7:50]
2) 2. Scherzo - Più lento - Tempo I [6:49]
3) 3. Marche funèbre (Lento) [8:25]
4) 4. Finale (Presto) [1:28]

György Ligeti (1923 - 2006)
6 etudes pour piano, premier livre
5) Etude n 4-Fanfares [3:40]

Alexander Scriabin (1872 - 1915)
Piano Sonata No.2, in G sharp minor op.19 "Sonata Fantasy"
6) 1. Andante [8:18]
7) 2. Presto [4:02]

György Ligeti (1923 - 2006)
8) Etude No.10 "Der Zauberlehring" [2:15]

Franz Liszt (1811 - 1886)
Piano Sonata in B minor, S.178
9) Lento assai - Allegro energico - Grandioso-Recitativo [12:24]
10) Andante sostenuto [7:45]
11) Allegro energico - Andante sostenuto - Lento assai [11:04]