BaL 4.05.24 - Ravel: Piano concerto for the left hand

[Barbirollians]

I'd be interested to see you expand on that. In my experience and opinion, Yuja Wang can play the piano very well, like many brilliant young pianists today, but her fame seems to me to depend more on her appearace on stage than on her interpretation of the music.

He sang her praises but excluded her from the final three due to her “ small hands” rather than identifying anything in her interpretation he disagreed with . I am always sceptical of the next big thing but I thought her Rachmaninov 3 at the 2019 Proms was exceptional. As is her recording of that , the Ravel concertos and the recent chamber music record with Capucon and Ottensamar.

[smittims]

Well certainly, anyone who can give an impressive Rach 3 shouldn't be criticised for having 'small hands', a problem which Harriet Cohen encountered playing Vaughan Williams' concerto. Maybe they feel they have to think quickly in giving a reason for discounting one of many recordings they have to consider, and come to a hasty conclusion. Perhaps it's a fault of the programme itself, that with so many recordings to consider, it gets a bit ruthless and 'first-past-the-post' ; when there were only a few it could be more equitable.

[Sir Velo]

I don't think I've ever heard a BAL where the size of a pianist's hands has been such a dominant feature of the programme, it was practically an idee fixe of Jeremy Sands! I think it was clear from the extracts that Yuja Wang, lacked little or nothing in panache and listening blind, pace Mr Sands, I would have been very hard pressed to tell the size of a pianists' hands from any of the extracts!

[oliver sudden]

There are chords in the opening solo that as far as I can see are absolutely meant to be spread—at one point there's a stretch of an 11th and offhand I can't remember a recording where that whole chord is played simultaneously. (My dear Samson François certainly doesn't manage it, but comes up with a much more interesting solution to my ear than just arpeggiating the chord.) As far as I'm concerned it's very much part of the tradition in such pieces of giving the impression of more than just one hand being at work.