COSTA MESA, Calif. — As Yuja Wang’s stature as a pianist has become undeniable, her slinky, skin-bearing concert attire and flirty stage demeanor, once used to brand her as unserious, remain. But rather than seeming disreputable or gimmicky, it’s now clear they’re only the most superficial and least interesting facets of Wang’s broader ambitions. Can you wear dizzying platform heels and outfits that leave little to the imagination and perform grueling concertos like Prokofiev’s Second as well as anyone ever has? At the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall on April 22, Wang demonstrated once again that, yes, you obviously can.
But since she’s been proving that for years, Wang now pursues more challenging goals. Her January 2023 traversal of all five of Rachmaninoff’s piano concertos with the Paganini Rhapsody in one concert (621 score pages, 97,000 notes) was unprecedented (whether or not it was worth doing artistically, it clearly drew crowds and attention). Even more ambitiously, her multimedia Playing with Fire in Paris in 2025 consummated — via VR immersion, avatars, spatial-audio narrative, and gallery-style installation — ideas peers like Stephen Hough, Víkingur Ólafsson, Maurizio Pollini, and even Glenn Gould have broached less comprehensively.
Her April 22 concert with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra — hosted by the Philharmonic Society of Orange County — also displayed the same relentless envelope-pushing that seems to be Wang’s larger career goal: She conducted from the piano and championed under-performed repertoire. Other pianists do this, too. But Wang went where no one had before: conducting and performing Prokofiev’s merciless Second Piano Concerto, among the most, if not the most, technically challenging canonical concertos.
For this feat, Wang called on the nomadic Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Claudio Abbado’s solution to giving his Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester graduates a vehicle to keep playing together. She first performed with them in 2010 for a Grammy-nominated Rachmaninoff album. She first conducted while performing with them in 2017, and has done the same with Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Lucerne Festival Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, and NYO-USA All-Stars. Wang can’t claim to be blazing trails as a woman pianist-conductor (so have Mitsuko Uchida, Martha Argerich, Maria João Pires, Angela Hewitt, and Clara Haskil), and as for championing under-performed repertoire, she is no Marc-André Hamelin.
But her advocacy credentials are impressive, from Nikolai Kapustin and Mieczysław Weinberg to György Ligeti, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Gabriela Ortiz, and Arturo Márquez. Though almost Wang’s signature concerto, Prokofiev’s Second, arguably his best, is not a mainstay and is infrequently recorded. Besides Wang, only Sviatoslav Richter, Emil Gilels, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Evgeny Kissin, Daniil Trifonov, and Yundi Li among the premier pianists have recorded it. But the real curatorial surprise April 22 was obscure Soviet jazz composer Alexander Tsfasman. (Paul Hindemith’s unjustly ignored Four Temperaments was also originally programmed but unaccountably dropped from the 10-city tour.)
Shostakovich’s exact contemporary, the Ukrainian-born Tsfasman was a true founder of Soviet jazz, giving the Moscow premiere of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Originally scheduled to close the concert’s first half, a last-minute program inversion made Tsfasman’s Jazz Suite for Piano and Orchestra (1956) the evening’s unexpected closer. Hardly profound, the idiomatic work effectively balances moods and styles across four movements: “Snowflakes,” “Lyrical Waltz,” “Polka,” and “Fast Movement.” Jazzy, yes, it also shifts smoothly between moments of Rachmaninoffian lushness and lilting Viennese lift. All very charming but lacking the grit and soul of American jazz. With Florian Kirner’s muted-trumpet raspberries and principal clarinet Vicente Alberola’s obbligato, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra proved it’s as comfortable swinging as channeling Mozartian elegance.
This democratic, cross-border band, without a command-and-control maestro, plays with verve, esprit de corps (they applaud each other), and flawless ensemble with a charismatic stage presence — smiles of enjoyment and a physicality, much like Wang’s, full of emphatic gestures and body movement.
They opened the second half by performing — standing — Prokofiev’s Symphony No.1 in D major (Classical) without Yang. Despite their moderate numbers, the ensemble kicked up impressive volume, supported by Segerstrom Hall’s acoustic bloom. Standout contributions were provided by Vincente Aberola on clarinet, Mathis Stier on bassoon, and concertmaster Matthew Truscott’s serenely Mozartian sheen, in the second movement especially. But following the thrilling power of Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto, his Classical Symphony — described by Prokofiev as having a gaiety “bordering on the indecently irresponsible” and “the ultimate in blitheness” — made the program switch look questionable when coupled with the equally unweighty Tsfasman jazz suite.
Finished three years before Prokofiev began his Classical Symphony, the Second Piano Concerto was closer to the composer’s heart. In December 1912, he declared (to himself), “In form and construction my Second Piano Concerto is going to be a consummate piece of work.” Four months later, he wrote, “I am totally in thrall to it,” while acknowledging its idiosyncrasies: “The orchestra is given no material whatsoever to present independently, and the pianist, once having started to play, does not cease until the final bar.”
Wang is the performer for a structure like that. Her lightning fluidity, rhythmic power, and complete mastery were made to order. She tossed off her big cadenzas in the first and fourth movements and the 1,500-some 16th notes in the two-minute second movement with apparent ease. The surprise was the mighty sonic presence of the orchestra, its 65-odd players theoretically underpowered for this piece. The volume of their eruption after the first-movement cadenza and in the coda were Mahlerian in decibel punch but always full of characterful color, such as Stiers’ dogged bassoon trudge in the glorious scherzo. A virtuoso orchestra for a virtuoso soloist-leader.
Though the Prokofiev and Tsfasman piano works gave Wang few opportunities to face her orchestra, when she did, it was with economy of motion, a natural confidence and authority, and the physicality needed to body-English a rhythm or entrance. In a thoroughly democratic partnership, she was unquestionably primus inter pares but with none of the fustian presence of an old-school batonist. Despite the sexy-glamor look, one rarely sensed showboating in Wang. She just plays, and how.
Only in her typically generous bouquet of encores did Wang reveal her human fallibility: the scherzo from Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique symphony (transcribed by Mikhail Pletnev) felt ragged, muddled, frankly horsewhipped. Luckily, she redeemed herself in the tasteful Menuet from Handel’s Suite No. 1 in B-flat major, HWV 434; a Scarlatti sonata; Arturo Marquez’s Danzon No. 2 (arranged by Leticia Gómez-Tagle), featuring clarinetist Alberol’s syncopated clapping; and — appropriately — the Precipitato from Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 7.
