Yuja Wang performs a recital accompanied by artworks of David Hockney.
In the November issue of The Critic (U.K.), Norman Lebrecht writes, “Possibly the last thing I expected to run into in this life was Yuja Wang playing Pierre Boulez at a David Hockney exhibition in a box-room behind London’s Eurostar terminal…. I felt that what I was witnessing in the King’s Cross Lightroom might actually be the future of concerts for the rest of the century…. Yuja, in London to play at the BBC Proms, went to see the David Hockney retrospective, ‘Bigger & Closer’ … The artist’s life’s work was presented in immersive form, projected onto walls four stories high… Yuja Wang, seeing ‘Bigger and Closer,’ decided that Hockney could be even more effective with music. She drew up a piano playlist to accompany the images, ranging from a Satie Gymnopédie … to Nikolai Medtner, Bach, Liszt, Shostakovich at his darkest, the final pages of Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique symphony, and Philip Glass. It took under an hour to play…. Why can’t all solo recitals be like this? Why won’t Carnegie Hall enhance its pianists with works of Pissarro or Picasso … Concertgoers who prefer their music uncontaminated by other stimuli can continue to attend with devoutly shut eyes. The rest of us can relish the interaction and possibly learn something.”
