Think you can’t get into piano concertos? The thought of listening to Mozart make you yawn? Then you haven’t met Yuja Wang and her jazzy Mozart tunes.
She turns the old dusty Rondo alla Turca into a completely new piece, infusing it with jazz and honky-tonk influences, in a now-viral video that’s been viewed more than 18 million times and shared over 330,000 times on Facebook. Her fingers fly across the keys, mounting a frenzied pace that at moments seem crazed but never out of her control. Her signature look of flowing, sparkling dresses with cutout accents and stiletto heels on the pedals make the performance that much more mesmerizing.
A music blog reports that it’s a mishmash of Arcadi Volodos and Fazil Say’s versions of the piece, for those classical wonks wondering.
Wang’s habit of following soaring, technically challenging performances — such as the one that preceded this piece, with the Berlin Philharmonic — with a playful work of her own design is well-documented. Sometimes, critics find this off-putting or disrespectful to the rest of the concert. Her response, as told in a New Yorker interview earlier this month, is as defiant as her stage presence:
“If instead of feeling exhausted I feel exhilarated, and want to make people happy by giving them a gift, why not do it? It feels like home to play those familiar pieces. People play encores after much more sublime pieces. Why can’t you do it after climbing Mt. Everest? Stupid conservative doctrine.”
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