While Olly is back in NY, living a life of pure hedonistic debauchery and espressos, I (Alasdair) have been plugging away, trying to find the best in new music and new musicians. Last night saw the LSO play at the Barbican, a fantastically “yes our building was built in the 60s and we love it” venue. It was an interesting, 20th Century composer set list, and if my tickets were not free I probably wouldn’t have risked the cash on the concert. Thank heavens for freebies then, as after 15 minutes of Charles Ives and me eyeing the nearest exit, we were introduced to, and I fell in love with, Yuja Wang…

A 22 year old “superhuman” piano playing prodigy, Yuja fired into Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No 3 in C major to a mesmerised crowd. The girl had passion, precission, and hair bouncing piano playing that put Myleene Klass to shame. What she also had was soul. She made the piece her own with her own flares and passionate body movement. The girl was gettingJazzical.

As an encore, Yuja returned to play Turkish March, but Turkish March like I’ve never heard it before. But then I suppose the last time I did hear it, was when my big brother played it in his first piano book. The crowd dispersed at the interval whistling the March on the way to the bathrooms, and proving that you can listen to as much atonal 20th century music as you like, it’s not going to be the discordant tubular bells we’ll be humming the next day.

Anyway, where words fail me in describing the beauty of Yuja Wang (and her piano playing mastery), this video might succeed:

An Aside

For those of you who are Spotify inclined, and who wish they had been enjoying a night with GetJazzical, we’ve created a playlist of the concert. It’s not as good as sitting next to us, but it’s probably the closest you’ll ever get.