Music Lane It's all about the music, dude! Sit down, relax and listen to some tunes.

---

[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] Thread: [ Display  All  Email ] [ Music Lane ]

---

[ Alert Moderator ]

---

Yuja conquers Watsonville

Posted by Chris from Lafayette (A) on February 21, 2017 at 19:19:58

"As soon as I found out she was playing, I knew I just HAD to be here!" exclaimed one breathless lady behind me as the anticipatory thrill built up over the audience at the Watsonville, CA, Henry J. Mello Center for the Performing Arts (aka the auditorium at Watsonville High School). Tickets of course had been sold out for weeks, as Yuja's appearance with the Santa Cruz Symphony bid fair to become perhaps the biggest event ever in the whole history of the orchestra. Even the publicists vied with each other as to who could wedge in the most hyperbole into their copy, e.g., "in what promises to be a landmark event, one of the world's most sensational, accomplished, and acclaimed artists, Yuja Wang will join the Santa Cruz Symphony for an all piano concerto program". People had been stoked for months about this concert!

The great lobby of the Henry J. Mello Center for the Arts in Watsonville

Watsonville is about an hour's drive southeast of San Jose, but the ambiance of the city, with its historic agricultural traditions, couldn't be more different from San Jose's keyed-up Silicon Valley vibe. On the way down highway 101, you pass through the town of Gilroy (which has long billed itself as "The Garlic Capital of the World"), Aromas, and other agrarian outposts. The town of Watsonville, from what I could tell, is now largely Chicano/Latino in its ethnic distribution, and it was striking to observe how this little enclave of geriatric white folks seemed to be huddled together last Sunday on the steps of the High School Auditorium (oops! I mean the Performing Arts Center) waiting for the doors to open so that they could come in for their "Yuja experience".

Because of possible flooding on the roads (fortunately not encountered!), I had arrived early, so I availed myself of one of the many fine local Taquerias near the Center, where I got a "quesadilla regular" for the menu price of exactly $1.86 ($2.01 with tax). For desert, I walked across the street to one of the many fine local donut shops, where I got a glazed donut for $1.00. It was then back to the performing arts center, where I took my seat (second row center - THANK YOU, Analog Scott!). I struck up a conversation with the guy next to me, who seemed to be filled with civic pride at the accomplishments of the Santa Cruz Symphony and the Watsonville board members. He declared, "There's no reason to have to drive up to San Francisco to attend concerts when our orchestra is so good - and now we have really international-level soloists like Yuja appearing down here too!"

As I suggested in a previous post, the program of Sunday's concert was a pretty superhuman test for the soloist: a less often heard Prokofiev Concerto (the Fifth) with that bedrock of the piano repertoire, the Brahms Second. The Prokofiev is not his most difficult concerto (that distinction would have to go to the Second), but it's certainly technically challenging enough, while everyone knows how hard the Brahms Concerto (with its "tiny wisp of a scherzo"!) is. After the orchestra was settled, a guy came out and sat in a chair directly in front of the concert master's. Of course! It was the page turner - Yuja would be using music for the Prokofiev. There was quite a discussion over on Google Groups a couple of weeks ago, wherein several posters attempted to belittle some of Yuja's performances because she used music - an indication to them that she really didn't know the works in question as well as she should or as well as pianists who play from memory do. I'm not going to get into a discussion of that subject here on this post, but I do find it to be a quaint and amateurish notion! I've seen Peter Serkin and Andras Schiff play concertos while using the music too, and I guess those performances too couldn't possibly be as good as the ones by pianists (of whatever level of accomplishment!) who play from memory! ;-)

Part of the excitement and suspense of the concert was centered around expectations as to what Yuja would be wearing, and, as she entered the stage in her sparkling micro-mini aquamarine outfit, a collective "Ooooh!" went up from the audience amidst all the applause. The older lady behind me couldn't contain herself any longer and exclaimed, "Oh! I just LOVE that dress!", and then proceeded to laugh out loud with delight! Alas, I had my cell phone turned off and didn't get it turned back on until intermission was well underway, so I don't have a picture of Yuja's "first half of the concert" miniskirt. Because of this, I feel that I've failed you all - but at least I did get a shot of her "second half of the concert" clingy gown, so it wasn't a total loss.

Although I've never played the work (either the solo part or the orchestral reduction), I like to think that I know the Prokofiev Fifth Concerto pretty well - I've had the score to this work for years, and the old Richter/Warsaw performance on DG was one of the earliest LP's I had. (And since then, I've acquired many more.) It's a spikey, astringent work which probably will never have the audience appeal of the composer's first three piano concertos. Nevertheless, the audience members on Sunday leapt to their feet (applauding thunderously) and let forth a giant "Woohoo!" when Yuja and the orchestra finished their performance. I felt that the performance was wonderful too (even though she was using the music!), but the delirious reaction on the part of the listeners did surprise me. The local booster guy next to me asked me (with a gleam in his eye), "Well! What did you think of THAT performance?" "Not too shabby!" I said, whereupon he replied, "Not too shabby indeed!" ;-)

The intermission was abuzz with comments about the music, the performance, and the outfit. There's always SO much to talk about at any Yuja event! But the BIG work was still to come, and after we returned to our seats, Yuja returned to the stage in a new outfit: a full length hip-hugging gown seen in the picture below. (I took both pics included with this post with my cell phone). Yuja was flying in the Brahms - rarely have I heard a performance with so much purposeful forward motion and kineticism. This was a reading to shake out all the cobwebs from the likes of Arrau and Barenboim (who both, I must admit, do make a good case for their slow tempos in the Brahms concertos). But Yuja's performance was really something else - I just hope she gets to record it. The orchestra was very alert in both works, although the horn section did have troubles throughout the Brahms. I liked the way in which the conductor (Daniel Stewart) kept things very clear and did not bring Yuja down by allowing the orchestra to drag the beat. Despite incidental mistakes along the way in the Brahms (a couple of unfortunately pitched notes in the cello solo in the slow movement too), I did get a good impression of the players. With live concerts, there always has to be some kind of annoyance, and in this one the annoyance happened at the worst possible time: the rapt stillness of the clarinet section in the slow movement interrupted by someone's darned cell phone going off! This is a part of "the absolute sound" I'd rather not experience! ;-)

There was but a single encore, Yuja's inimitable rendition of Mozart's Rondo alla turca. I think I've given up trying to disentangle how many other versions of this work are included in her version: of course, you can clearly hear parts of the Arcady Volodos and Fazil Say transcriptions, but there are more ingredients in the mix than those two, including some fancy figurations no doubt originating from Yuja herself. In any case, it's always fun - and it kept the audience at the same euphoric state which started when she first walked out onstage!

The Santa Cruz Symphony concert master relishes his view of Yuja in the town of Watsonville on Sunday

As I was leaving, I heard another conversation between two old ladies, one of whom was still ejaculating about how much she LOVED Yuja's miniskirt from the first half of the program. "But I DID NOT like those tights she was wearing underneath! They were too thick and they didn't look good!"

All in all, I really lucked out with this concert. (Thanks again, Scott!) And my luck was not confined to experiencing a couple of incredibly fine performances, but it also extended to my safe travel (two hours each way). Our California rain has continued since Sunday, and as I write this, I'm hearing that highway 101 near Morgan Hill (another town you pass on your way to Watsonville) is under water.

Edits: 02/21/17 02/22/17 02/22/17 02/23/17

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Signature Sound

[ Signature Sound Lounge ]

---

[ Top of Page ] [ Contact Us ] [ Support/Wish List ] [ Copyright © 2024, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]

---

[ General ] [ Speakers ] [ Tubes ] [ Vinyl ] [ Digital ] [ Hi-Rez ] [ Video Asylum ] [ Cables ] [ Tweaks/DIY ] [ Music ] [ Films ]

---