The Berlin Recital / Yuja Wang

Yuja Wang (piano)

Yuja Wang’s philosophy of music is both simple and profoundly complex. “I want to relate all life to music,” she recently told veteran British critic Fiona Maddocks. The Beijing-born pianist’s latest album for Deutsche Grammophon, set for international release on 23 November 2018, captures the white heat of solo works by Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, Scriabin and Ligeti, a trio of Russians together with one of the late 20th-century’s greatest composers. The Berlin Recital was recorded live this summer at the Berlin Philharmonie’s Kammermusiksaal during Yuja’s extensive solo tour of North America and Europe. The Yellow Label also recorded her sublime series of Berlin encore pieces to form a separate EP, which spans everything from the riffs and roulades of Nikolai Kapustin’s jazz-tinged Toccatina to Earl Wild’s sonorous transcription of the Pas de Quatre from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.

Price: $18.98