Wuja

Tuesday past to hear Wuja Yang at the Festival Hall. Shortly after I booked the concert, quite some time ago, on the strength of a mainly Schubert programme, I got an email explaining that Schubert was mainly off, in favour of the Chopin Preludes (Op.28). Which was fine, as I like the Preludes. We get there to a programme which had Schubert, Brahms then Chopin, and a notice which explained that actually we were going to get Chopin then Brahms (in the form of some unknown to us variations on theme by Handel, Op.24).

No aeroplanes at all on the way in, but we do arrive in time to take a little refreshment, over which we thought we had come across a second young lady engineer, on the grounds that she was reading paper headed 'IEEE', but she turned out to be a Romanian marketing person. The first one had been Oxford educated and while not saying or doing anything offensive or unpleasant, managed to keep up an irritating conversation with a young male colleague all the way to Waterloo. Perhaps it was the sub-text of  'I'm the greatest' which grated. Much preferred Romania to Oxford. Better looking too.

And behind her was a lady who turned out to come from China and who was wearing very little on the top half of her slender body apart from a few straps. Probably in her thirties rather than her twenties, but she certainly made male heads turn and female jaws gape.

In the nearly full hall, there were quite a lot of Chinese, although not as many as had turned out for Yundi Li at the concert noticed at reference 1. Wuja continued her prima donna bit by having us wait for quite a long time after the lights dimmed for her entrance, to the point of someone behind us muttering about 'get on with it'. Did she have to crank herself up to get through the door? But I liked her playing manners, generally quiet, but working her face some of the time and working her whole upper body for the particularly loud or fast bits. Both her dresses - she thought it proper to change during the interval - were skin tight shimmering affairs and she also sported high heels - which I would have thought a bit of a nuisance from a pedal point of view. Oddly, she had a very abrupt way of bowing. But I suppose, if you are thirty and have spent the past 25 years clambering to the top of the classical piano ladder, there is going to be some collateral damage.

I thought she did very well indeed on the Chopin and pretty well on the Brahms. I dare say the Brahms would have been even better had I known it. There were four encores, of which we stayed for three, mostly modern stuff which I was not that keen on, but including one bit which sounded like Schubert.

No wave of groupies, as there had been on the last occasion. Perhaps they had been cooled down by the announcement that there would be no CD signing.

A composite program, that is to say serving more than one concert. For the first time ever, a composite program which we will get more than one use out of. Provided, that is, we remember both that it exists and where it is when the time comes. Challenging.

Full moon.

PS 1: unenthusiastically reviewed by the Guardian, about a week later. We have noticed before that the Guardian can be a bit down on things that we were fine with.

PS 2: Wuja appears in most Wigmore Hall programs, wearing a very short little red number with very high heels, sat at or draped over a Steinway. Can't remember whether she is advertising herself, Steinway or what.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/a-plangent-pop-concert.html.

Reference 2: http://yujawang.com/.