Yuja Wang

Yuja Wang grew up in a musical Chinese family. When she started playing the piano that her parents had received as a wedding present she could hardly reach the pedals. After training in China, Canada and the USA, she made her international breakthrough in 2007, when she stepped in for the legendary pianist Martha Argerich at a Boston Symphony Orchestra concert.

Since then she has established herself as one of the world's leading artists of her generation, with a repertoire encompassing both Beethoven and John Adams. With her great charisma, spontaneity and her sensitive, clear playing style she is known for spellbinding audiences; she frequently does not decide what she is going to play until immediately before entering the stage – 'I firmly believe every program should have its own life, and should be a representation of how I feel at the moment,' she told the New York Times.

Photo: Julia Wesely

Information

​Read more about Yuja Wang in the article Gold, glitter and piano keys.

Contributors

• ​Yuja Wang piano

Works

• Samuel Barber (1910–1981)

  Piano sonata in E-flat minor, op. 26

• Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1976)

  Prelude in G sharp minor, op. 34 no. 12

  Prelude in C sharp minor, op. 34 no. 10

  Prelude in F-sharp minor, op. 87 no. 8

  Prelude and Fugue in D-flat major, op. 87 no. 15

  Prelude in D minor, op. 34 no. 24

  Prelude in D major, op. 34 no. 5

  Prelude in B flat minor, op. 34 no. 16

Interval

• Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849)

  Ballade no. 1 in G minor, op. 23

  Ballade no. 2 in F major, op. 38

  Ballade no. 3 in A-flat major, op. 47

  Ballade no. 4 in F minor, op. 52

Venue

Grieghallen

Supported by

​Yvonne & Bjarne Rieber/AS Rika