Yuja Wang

Yuja Wang is a piano soloist born in Beijing in 1987, now a fixture of major US orchestras' stages. She is celebrated for combining formidable technical control with an unusually direct, high-energy stage presence. Listeners come to hear her tackle the most demanding concerto repertoire, from Prokofiev to Brahms, and increasingly to see her lead from the keyboard, as in her upcoming Louisville appearances where she both conducts and plays.

Expect tempos on the fast side of fast, articulated with a percussive clarity that never blurs into haze, and a willingness to take real risks in the moment rather than replay a fixed interpretation. In the Louisville Brahms concertos she plays from the keyboard while also leading the orchestra, so listen for how tightly the piano and ensemble breathe together rather than trading solo and accompaniment. Her Prokofiev is famous for its glittering, almost mechanical precision paired with sudden lyrical warmth, useful to know going into the Third Concerto in Seattle. In San Francisco's tribute program she appears in Barber's lush, late-Romantic Piano Concerto, a chance to hear her slower, more expansive side. She favors dramatic contrasts of volume and speed over steady, even pacing, and her encores, when offered, tend toward virtuosic showpieces played at breakneck speed.

Yuja Wang was born in Beijing in 1987 into a musical family and began piano studies there before training at Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music under Gary Graffman. She came to wide international attention in the mid-2000s, including stepping in on short notice for major orchestras, and has since built a career centered on the core Romantic and twentieth-century concerto repertoire, particularly Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, and Brahms. She has recorded extensively and performed with most of the leading American and European orchestras. In more recent seasons she has also taken on conducting from the piano, leading concertos while playing the solo part, an approach reflected in her upcoming Louisville Orchestra performances of both Brahms piano concertos.