Chinese piano superstar Yuja Wang releases new album, Ravel
Recording with Swiss orchestra with whom she made her European debut 12 years ago features two concertos by the French composer and reunites her with acclaimed young conductor Lionel Bringuier
Chinese pianist Yuja Wang is reunited with the Zürich Tonhalle Orchestra – the ensemble with whom she made her European debut in 2003 aged 15 – in her latest recording, Ravel.
Released in Hong Kong on Friday, the Deutsche Grammophon album is Wang’s first foray into French repertoire on disc, and features Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major and the less familiar Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D major as well as the original piano solo version of Fauré’s Ballade in F sharp major op. 19.
“In my opinion,” Wang says of Ravel’s music, “it has the exactness of a Swiss clock mechanism, but layered on top of that, it is about pleasure, pure and simple.”
On the podium for this new recording is French conductor Lionel Bringuier, who was awarded first prize and the Prix du Public at the 49th Besançon Young Conductors Competition in 2005. He went on to be appointed chief conductor and music director of the Tonhalle in 2012, at the age of 26.
Ravel follows Wang’s acclaimed recording of concertos by Rachmaninov and Prokofiev last year with conductor Gustavo Dudamel.
Wang and Bringuier have collaborated since she played Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra under his baton in Stockholm in 2008. After their Ravel project, they will team up again in November to perform Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9, “Jeunehomme”, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Before then the pianist will embark on a tour of Asia with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra that includes stops in Taipei, Kyoto, Nagoya and Tokyo.
Next year Wang is scheduled to give a solo recital at New York’s Carnegie Hall in May and the following month she will reunite with Bringuier once again for performances of both Ravel concertos with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, in Italy.
