TT 554: Unexpected Piano

Yuja Wang plays Ligeti, Georg Friedrich Haas and 50 pianos, Christopher O'Riley and Bach, Aaron Diehl or Craig Taborn for free, Gilmore winners including Sullivan Fortner, Dave Burrell at the library

There can be actual celebrities at New York parties, don’t let anyone tell you different. To my astonishment, I recently was in earnest conversation with Yuja Wang, the two of us standing next to a kitchen sink in Brooklyn. I was even more surprised when she told me that she is playing the piano concerto of György Ligeti several times this coming year.

Wang is a superstar virtuoso, someone who is a guaranteed box-office smash, and she just opened the season at Carnegie Hall playing the famous Tchaikovsky concerto.

I’m sure that was a great concert, but it was also business as usual. The Ligeti concerto inhabits another realm entirely.

Not all virtuosos play modern music, a state of affairs that is not always the soloist’s choice. Once you get to a certain level, the whole team of promoters and agents (not to mention the audience) have to be placated.

A classic example of boorish oversight took place in 1910, when the New York Philharmonic overruled two of the consequential musicians of the age, composer/conductor Gustav Mahler and composer/pianist Ferruccio Busoni, when they wanted to program Beethoven’s 4th concerto. The board complained that Beethoven 4 was too esoteric and demanding, so could Mahler and Busoni please present the popular one, no. 5, the Emperor Concerto, instead?

By now, Beethoven 4 is now established rep, but if a soloist tries to insist on, say, Beethoven 2, it may still be problem. (I did get to see Martha Argerich play Beethoven 2 in Italy years ago, it was great.)

By programming Ligeti, Yuja Wang is advocating for modernism, atonality, and the comparatively new (the work was composed and premiered in the late 1980s). Of course, the Ligeti is also a great piece, and reasonably accessible by atonal standards. Indeed, nobody sold atonality as well as Ligeti. Her audience is going to love it.

But there’s gonna be grit, sweat, and tears along the way. The orchestras will need to prepare. (The orchestras don’t need to prepare for Chopin, Tchaikovsky, or Rachmaninoff concertos.) Wang herself needs to look at every bar of the score with a slide ruler, magnifying glass, and compass.

Due to the unconventional key signature(s), this excerpt from the first movement may be more difficult to read then you expect. Much of the time the orchestra is playing in 4/4 firmly against the pianist’s 12/8. A watermarked copy of the full score to the Ligeti Piano Concerto can be perused at the Schott website

Big kudos to a star for committing to this kind of task and this kind of risk.

Wang’s concerto season also includes Prokofiev 2, which is standard in the 21st century, although for years the only Prokofiev concerto regularly heard on the big stages was no. 3. This is perhaps not unlike Rachmaninoff: At the very beginning, Rach 2 was the only popular contender, but by the 1970s Rach 3 was common (it was the advocacy of Vladimir Horowitz that made the difference). In both cases, Rach 3 and Prok 2, the demands on the soloist are otherworldly, with the long first movement cadenza of Prok 2 extending to the limits of extreme pianistic possibility.

from the first movement cadenza of Prok 2

A 2013 DG release of Wang’s live recording of both concertos with Gustavo Dudamel is spectacular.

These two summit concertos were composed within a few years of each other, Rach 3 in 1909 and Prok 2 in 1912/13, although Prokofiev’s original manuscript was destroyed during the Russian Revolution and he had to recompose the work in 1923

Back to 2025: Wang starts in Boston this weekend with Prok 2. Her schedule then includes Ligeti in several cities, Chopin and Ravel, and yet another surprise, the first concerto of Einojuhani Rautavaara. Somehow I only became aware of Rautavaara after he died in 2020; Esa-Pekka Salonen was his student and has become a visible advocate. The first Rautavaara concerto is tremendous, and if Wang’s performances help the piece become a repertory staple , then Rautavaara 1 will become the only familiar piano concerto composed circa 1969. (An all-too-typical process where the work becomes popular only after the composer’s death! So it goes.)

---

snapshot taken just before the performers entered the drill hall

Georg Friedrich Haas pulled off a coup getting 50 pianos into the Park Avenue Armory for 11000 Strings, an hour-long work for microtonal uprights and 25 additional instruments performed by Klangforum Wien. The piece received substantial publicity and seemed to be nearly sold out for a multi-night run, thus proving that New York City can still care about avant-garde culture.

11000 Strings was particularly suited to the huge central drill hall of the Armory. Over the past decade or so I’ve seen several large scale productions that attempted to command this unique space, yet frequently the end product was something lesser than the sum of its parts. Not this time: 11000 Strings at the Armory was correct in every dimension.

Like Ligeti, Haas is an atonal composer who wants the audience to get it. In the notes, Hass explained that 11000 Strings was not an experimental work, that it was simply to be listened to. The pianos roared and whispered; a moment of major triads just slightly out of key with each other exploded through the hall like tonal firecrackers.

a few famous American players in the mix: Adam Tendler, Lisa Moore, Blair McMillen and Erika Dohi for starters

---

Bargemusic has moved! The humble Brooklyn venue used to be on a literal barge rocking on the harbor and thus one of the most unusual places to hear chamber music. Now it is ten minutes walk south along the water into the park; the entrance is up a hill on the street side.

Christopher O’Riley has been studying and playing the Well-Tempered Clavier for a lifetime, and now the second book is available on record. (I reviewed the first volume here.)

Bach is actually a bit of a tough sell for a concert pianist, and perhaps especially the preludes and fugues. The one time I observed an en masse walk out at Carnegie Hall was when Daniel Barenboim played Book One of the WTC. Barenboim was fine, I guess, but in the nosebleed seats even I had some trouble focusing on all that endless quiet counterpoint. It wasn’t a surprise when most of the seats next to me were empty after intermission.

At the new Barge, I enjoyed O’Riley essaying the first half of Book Two. His approach is spacious, vocal, and a shade theatrical. O’Riley also encouraged the audience to clap after every fugue. This mildly subversive gambit brought the audience’s attention back to focus for each new prelude. Excellent!

---

It’s perhaps never been harder to get audiences out to see interesting music. The Haas 11000 Strings was a not-to-be-missed event, but only a few of those happen a season.

Bargemusic is, for the moment at least, free to all, as are two upcoming concerts by two important jazz pianists.

Aaron Diehl is performing James P. Johnson at Lincoln Center Saturday night, while Craig Taborn is premiering a commission with Yarn/Wire on Tuesday at Miller Theater. I would recommend going to these even at a painful price point, but the fact that they are pay-what-you-want really means: Ya gotta go. I’ll be at both.

---

Craig Taborn just won the MacArthur Fellowship, well-deserved! Almost simultaneously, Sullivan Fortner was awarded the Gilmore’s Inaugural 2026 Larry J. Bell Jazz Artist Award. That meant more than one million dollars was given to two wonderful jazz pianists within 48 hours, no strings attached. My only quibble was about the painstaking selection process for the Gilmore, which apparently took years to complete. After all, if you quickly asked the appropriate people over a day’s worth of phone calls, I’m sure the answer would come back readily enough, “Eh, just give it to Sullivan.”

Tyler Bullock and Esteban Castro also received Young Artists Awards at an event held at the Greene Space. Ted Panken reported about the ceremony, the Gilmore, and Larry J. Bell in DownBeat.

Getting the work done on “Take the Coltrane!” Three Gilmore award winners: Sullivan Fortner, Tyler Bullock and Esteban Castro.

---

Dave Burrell has had a bit of an underground career. While his most high-profile gigs have been with those with an avant lean, like Archie Shepp and David Murray, his own work is sort of stark and accessible. In a way he’s the ultimate musical theatre and cocktail pianist; years ago, at the Bimhuis in Amsterdam, Huub van Riel would give Burrell a week-long holiday gig in the foyer. While his chops are in fine working order (and they still are at 85), whatever Burrell does with harmony and melody is jagged and intentionally primitive. While there are obvious affinities to Jaki Byard or Stanley Cowell, Burrell has always remained just outside the mainstream of jazz.

I learned about Burrell’s gig at the Grand Army Plaza library thanks to a note from Hank Shteamer. The Dweck Center in the basement was a surprise, a lovely auditorium with a good piano, and simply packed to the brim for a 4 PM Sunday concert. (I got on the mailing list; there is a lot going on, and it is all free.)

Burrell rambled in a stream-of-consciousness manner through standards and originals; he also spoke the audience in a humorous and engaging manner. The highlight may have been the old chestnut “All the Way,” where the nearly trite melody was undone by esoteric atonal splashes. As much as I have tried to keep up with everybody important, I have basically missed Dave Burrell until now, and was very happy to receive a corrective live and on the wing.

Dave Burrell at the central Brooklyn library, 85 years young