Photo: Valeria Mongelli/AFP via Getty Images
[T]housands of Georgians took to the streets of the countryโs capital Tbilisi for two days of protests, waving EU flags andย facing down riot policeย armed with water cannons and tear gas. The contentious [now withdrawn] legislation would have required all organizations that receive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad to register as foreign agents. The Georgian law was widely viewed as inspired by Vladimir Putinโฆ
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SING IT.
Georgia, Georgia
The whole day through
As you march toward
Your place in the EU
I said Georgia
Georgia, what joy I find
Freedomโs old sweet song
Keeps Georgia on my mind
Other arms reach out to you
Other eyes lie viciously
Still in peaceful crowds I see
The road leads back to you
Virtuosity on this level, in material this ravishing, is elevating to witness โ which is why, even after so many hours, I was left at the end feeling an exhilarated lightness. Like many others I saw, I drifted up the aisle and onto the street unable to stop smiling.
Does UD wish sheโd been there? Sure. (She tried for a ticket long after it sold out.) Is she sure she would have stayed in her seat (well, there were intermissions) for all four and a half hours? Hm.
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The ravished NYT reviewer offers some nice writing:
[H]er prevailing style is sprightly, which is why the concert didnโt feel like eating five slices of chocolate cake in a rowโฆ
Her pillowy chords at the close of the Second Concertoโs middle movement floated quietly into placeโฆ
This handful of measures painted a whole situation and personality: vulnerable, strong, searching but not lost...
A shivering hush in the first movement of the Third Concerto was like a snow in which Wang made soft footsteps with the palest chords.
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Gevalt. Financial Times:
[T]icketless crowds โฆ congregated on 7th Avenue, many bearing placards โ โI need just one! Iโll pay anything!โ โฆ
The audience staggered out into the Manhattan dusk, as one, all changed; all humbled; all grateful for that ticket.
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Update: Further thoughts on the Wang phenomenon. For what itโs worth. And Iโm only a reasonably informed amateur pianist. And more self-deprecating stuff like that.
I want to suggest that, counterintuitively, itโs Yuja Wangโs LACK of sensibility that lifts her above other pianists, who donโt typically produce crowds of people begging for tickets outside their venues.
When I watched my first Wang YouTube, I relaxed immediately into the knowledge that she simply would never hit a wrong key. Never. Not that I could hear.
I also relaxed in the face of her TOTAL absence of neurotic ego, as in Glenn Gould or V. Horowitzโฆ With Horowitz, for instance, his immense sadness โhis ashen features as he played even the most exuberant music โ for me, itโs a one-note emotional experience, hearing him. Heโs in it too much. Muddies the music.
And itโs not even fair, mentioning Gould.
But consider another, contemporary performer, a great pianist, and one with whom Wang has played duets: Khatia Buniatishvili. Close to the same technical virtuosity, to my ear. And I listen to her a lot. Howsomeverโฆ
Thereโs still the sense she conveys of what a heavy-weight experience it is, playing this stuff. Her features are usually squinched in a private angst as she plays. Which is okayโฆ I mean, of course itโs authentic, and it conveys the poignancy of the sound and the challenge of generating it, etc. But it disallows the thing that allows the NYT critic to note not only Wangโs effortless production of many hours of difficult playing (plus encores); just as importantly, it allows him to say this:
[H]er prevailing style is sprightly, which is why the concert didnโt feel like eating five slices of chocolate cake in a rowโฆ Virtuosity on this level, in material this ravishing, is elevating to witness โ which is why, even after so many hours, I was left at the end feeling an exhilarated lightness. Like many others I saw, I drifted up the aisle and onto the street unable to stop smiling.
Ungluttonous, elevating, light, driftingโฆ Here is a pianist who generates in her audience, and I donโt want to get too-too about it, transcendence. She literally made an enormous roomful of people transcend the weight of being human (โItโs hard to be human,โ as Tommy Raskin put it.), and they naturally craved that and stayed for that and drifted into the streets retaining that for as long as one can in the middle of Manhattan.
And just how does Yuja Wang take them there? She herself transcends the dull stupid particularity of being the human being she is while she plays. She is in the transcendent realm of beautiful complete expressivity and sheโs simply really happy and grateful to be there. No complex sensibility at all; just delight. Michael Tilson Thomas
ย liken[s] her to a racehorse.
โShe wants to run; she wants to show everything she can do.โ
People wept when Secretariat pulled away; and yes of course great artists arenโt in competition yadda yadda โฆ But the reality is that the relaxation I felt in the first seconds of encountering Wang is about this insanely rare capacity she has to stand aside and let me inside too.
I like the way she puts that. Have his way with the government.