Wang sports pianist and leader hats in Jazz Age Philharmonic program
The audience at the New York Philharmonic Thursday night saw a different side of Yuja Wang—literally.
In a season of guest conductors at the Philharmonic, the Chinese musician was billed as “pianist/leader” in three works for piano and small orchestra, all composed in the mid-1920s: Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments, Janáček’s Capriccio for Piano Left-Hand and Chamber Ensemble, and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue in its original jazz-band version. For the first two, the piano was turned upstage, so that she played facing the orchestra, her back to the audience.
Accordingly, the concert’s many rewards included a visual appreciation of just how wide a piano keyboard is, with its pitch range from sepulchral lows to highs almost beyond hearing, and the athleticism required to perform on it.
In her many videos, this pianist’s presence at the keys is as impressive (and expressive) from the back as in profile, and on Thursday this view, emphasized by the artist’s halter mini-dress, was featured for two-thirds of the program.
The piano was oriented more traditionally for the Rhapsody, which occasioned a rare sight: the grand entrance, during the re-set between pieces, of the piano’s nine-foot-long lid, which had been removed for the Stravinsky and the Janáček.
Turning the piano and attaching its lid gave the soloist an acoustical advantage she lacked in the first two pieces, and which the composers may have intended her to have. As it was, her heroic efforts in those works tended to blend with the orchestra rather than stand out from it. But there was pleasure to be had from the feeling of chamber-music collaboration she established with the other musicians.
A concerto soloist simultaneously conducting the orchestra doesn’t always work out, as anyone who heard the Academy of St.-Martin-in-the-Fields shuffling along behind Joshua Bell in the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto can attest. Leonard Bernstein, on the other hand, delighted audiences playing and leading Mozart piano concertos and Rhapsody in Blue.
Wang, of course, is not Bernstein, and she wisely passed on the designation “conductor” for this concert. Instead, she chose her spots, setting a tempo here, gesturing encouragingly there, and sometimes just sitting quietly and enjoying a well-played tutti passage.
The stately Largo introduction of Stravinsky’s neo-baroque concerto could have used more guidance to hold it together, but the motoric Allegro that followed was crisp and spirited, and Wang’s leaping left hand was a sight to behold. Another Largo began with an eloquent piano solo, while horns and clarinets seemingly had to grope for the beat, but in a later episode the woodwinds entwined charmingly over a steady piano pulse. Forte interruptions with piano arpeggios punctuated the eventful movement.
The even-more-capricious Finale opened with a brisk march and animated solo episodes. The ensemble smartly negotiated the ever-shifting meters, needing little help from the busy soloist. After a languid episode in dotted rhythm, a flurry of notes from the pianist brought the work to a sudden close.
Though titled Capriccio, the Janáček work was a good deal less lighthearted than the Stravinsky, imbued instead with the dark aftermath of World War I. (It was in fact a veteran, the Czech pianist Otakar Hollmann, who requested this left-hand piece, having lost the use of his right arm in the war.) Perhaps Janáček had Brahms’s brawny capriccios for solo piano in mind, or the title recognized the music’s constantly changing character and tempos.
In any case, the pianist had one hand free throughout, and was able to steer the other players after her brilliant opening cadenza, setting tempos for a march and a dreamy waltz, and conversing with the low brass. A nocturne-like Adagio followed, with a more animated middle section; at times Wang even conducted herself, as if shaping her solos with her free hand.
The scherzo-like Allegretto opened with a low-brass bear dance, but became a blur of scales for the soloist, requiring her to beat time for the other players with her free hand. The movement ended leisurely for the orchestra, while Wang spun out rapid scales and leaps that would challenge a two-handed pianist.
The closing Andante began in a tender murmur of flute and brass, with the soloist commenting in graceful phrases and a harp-like ripple of arpeggios. A four-note descending phrase repeated over and over in the brass like a benediction, as pianist and high winds lifted the music to a quietly ecstatic close.
The novelty of this performance of Rhapsody in Blue was the original jazz band scoring by Ferde Grofé, as reconstructed in a 2022 edition by Ryan Raul Bañagale and receiving its Philharmonic premiere Thursday. The Rhapsody, improvisational in character and improvised in part by the composer himself at the premiere, comes to us in various versions besides Grofé’s 1926 arrangement for symphony orchestra, which has become the standard. While the recent edition gave players various options and reinstated some deleted bars here and there, the version heard Thursday was familiar in its general outlines.
Whether with dance band or symphony orchestra, Gershwin considered the Rhapsody classical music, and Wang approached it as such, lavishing all her color palette and phrase-shaping on it like any other Romantic piano concerto. Which isn’t to say she couldn’t strum and strut when the moment demanded it, but even when stepping along with a slim ensemble of oboe, clarinets, saxophones, brass, violins, banjo, and lots of percussion, she couldn’t resist giving her part the kind of depth associated with its models, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff. (The latter, incidentally, was in the audience when Gershwin played the premiere.) And given Wang’s exceptional taste and imagination, one wouldn’t have wanted her to resist.
As the Philharmonic musicians energetically followed her lead, crackling when she crackled and swooning when she swooned, the result was perhaps not the “authentic performance practice” version of that 1924 Paul Whiteman jazz concert, but it was a consistently delightful, often thrilling performance of Rhapsody in Blue, something to be grateful for in itself.
The program will be repeated 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday. nyphil.org
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