Launched on Deutsche Grammophon, Wang performs with the Louisville Orchestra and conductor Teddy Abrams
Celebrating America’s wealthy musical tradition, Yuja Wang’s “The American Challenge” showcases her virtuosity in Jazz, Latin, and Blues types in a world premiere recording of Teddy Abrams’ Piano Concerto, written particularly for her.
The second work on the album is You Come Right here Usually? for solo piano, additionally written for Wang by one other shut good friend, Michael Tilson Thomas. Each works have been recorded dwell with the Louisville Orchestra, carried out by Abrams, its music director.
Wang and Abrams met as college students whereas finding out at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music and fashioned a long-lasting friendship. Initially developed as a brief companion piece to Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, Abrams’ Piano Concerto later remodeled right into a 35-minute standalone showpiece.
Written in eleven sections, Abrams’ Piano Concerto includes a swing-style large band overture, three solo cadenzas, an “orchestra break” within the model of Gershwin, Latin jazz-inspired “Solos,” and American gospel tunes. Wang carried out the world premiere with the Louisville Orchestra on the Kentucky Heart in January 2022.
“The piano, particularly, is a type of wanderer that makes it via a whole lot of years of musical historical past, and is so translatable to different types,” Abrams stated. “I see this concerto as a chance for the piano to information us via what I feel is likely one of the strengths of American tradition, its plurality, its interconnectedness,” he continued. “I feel Yuja’s one of many best pianists alive, and of all time. I all the time supposed for her to be the one to take this piece and make it her personal.”
The album represents shut connections between Wang and the 2 composers — Abrams obtained his first conducting classes at age 11 from Tilson Thomas, who turned a mentor and good friend. Tilson Thomas additionally supported Wang in the beginning of her profession and whose 2016 work You Come Right here Usually? was a part of a challenge rising her inventory of encores to carry out.
To buy and hearken to the album, click on right here.
