In the classical music business, the pianist Yuja Wang is one of the few safe bets. Her glamorous sound, fiery technique and sharp musicality, served up with impish charm and slinky couture, reliably cause runs on the box office.
Wang’s former teacher Gary Graffman once described her as “undaunted by everything.” So it was fascinating to see this star show off an inexperienced and even awkward side at David Geffen Hall on Thursday, joining musicians of the New York Philharmonic in three 20th-century chamber concertos as both soloist and conductor.
The result was a high-wire act that included noticeable wobbles in Stravinsky’s thorny Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments and Janacek’s eccentric Capriccio for Piano Left-Hand. The 75-minute concert ended in a dazzling rendition of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” in the original jazz band orchestration by Ferde Grofé. At the final, triumphant chord, the auditorium erupted in what may have been elation mixed with relief at the successful conclusion of a dangerous stunt. Most important, the evening felt like an exciting and risky experiment at an institution that has otherwise steered a conservative line during this interregnum season without a music director.
It’s not uncommon for pianists to lead from the piano bench in works from the Classical period. But Wang’s chosen material was riddled with rhythmic complexity and the kinds of counterintuitive pairings of instruments that require dedicated attention to balance. Stravinsky’s neo-Baroque concerto is a contrapuntal workout for individual wind and brass players who have to bring the same detached precision and crispness to their lines as the pianist. Interestingly, their coordination was tightest when Wang’s hands were busy with her own part. Her cues as a leader were not nearly as confident — the arms a little too vague, the nods too emphatic. More than a few entrances fumbled into place.
Janacek’s Capriccio is a strange hybrid of lyricism and grotesque shocks of color. Commissioned by a Czech musician who had lost the use of his right arm in World War I, it is one of several astonishingly effective works written around that time for pianists with battlefield injuries. For an able-bodied performer like Wang, this leaves the right hand free to take on the job of cuing the trumpets, trombone, tuba and flute who enter into an array of precariously delicate partnerships. The mix of vulnerability and boldness came through in full force in this performance, which included some audible jitters but also expressive moments where Wang’s milky legato meshed with the attentive, even tender, playing of the lower brass.
That the Gershwin came off without a hitch is not surprising: The Philharmonic has this piece in their bones. The associate principal clarinetist, Ben Adler, led the opening upward squeal with exultant sassiness, setting the tone for a high-spirited romp that brought grins to the faces of many onstage. As expected, Wang dispatched her virtuosic passages with Lisztian thunder, but she also added small personal touches to certain lines and embellishments that seemed fully spontaneous.
It was that spirit — of trying something fresh, at an institution predicated on perfection — that had made not just the “Rhapsody,” but the whole concert so invigorating.
The New York Philharmonic
This program repeats through Saturday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org.
