Yuja Wang

wow.

i just got back from the sf symphony hall after watching yuja wang beast up a concert.  here's a quick clip of her tearing up the keys.

here's a record of the adventure that amos and i have gone through these past two nights:

3/30/2008

Amos surprised me with tickets to the SF symphony for 3/30, featuring the one and only Yuja Wang and Sir Neville blahblah, who founded the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, which was the group that recorded the soundtrack for the famous movie Amadeus.

Anyways, Mikey, Jeanette, Amos, and I left Stanford around 5ish to make the 8:00 concert. However, the concert actually started at 7:00, so by the time we had got to the symphony hall, Yuja's performance was almost over!

Frustrated, Amos and I were trying to think of a plan to meet her. Amos somehow knew of the musician's entrance to the hall, so we went there to beg the security guards to let us in.

We ended up staying there for the entire second half + 4 encores :/ until we FINALLY saw Yuja walking towards the exit. As she left, we went up to her and explained

that we were wondering if we could get an autograph / photo with her, to which she kindly obliged to and gave us both. During our conversation with her, we asked if she could

play the the Volodos piece (the youtube video) as an encore for tomorrow night's performance. She said that she had already played the Volodos piece last year at SF and implied that she didn't want to play it, but she said she would play it. We had to come back the following night and find out if she was true to her word!

3/31/2008

Amos convinces me to go with him again to the SF Symphony hall to watch Yuja play. Too bad for us that she's playing Mozart compared to Mendelssohn :/, but it was Yuja, so we weren't complaining. Amos purposely

bought us tickets in the third row from the front so we could get a lot of applause going for an encore at the end. When Yuja finally finished playing the concerto, we were too shy to stand up at first. But, lucky for us, some

guy in the first row stood up, so we just had to stand up and keep the applause going. Sure enough, Yuja came back out for the encore and decided to play...the VOLODOS! It was absolutely beautiful, and even though she messed

up towards the end, we were just speechless at how beastly she played it. We tried to meet her again at the intermission, so we tried sneaking in the back door, but it was locked and we had no luck trying to force it open. When

we went back to the musician's entrance, the security guards there told us Yuja had already left. NOOOO! It was tragic, but we were super happy that she played the Volodos. I still maintain that Yuja played the Volodos for Amos

especially since:

1. She had already played the Volodos last year

2. The Volodos is freaaaking hard to play, so she would have had to practice it, etc.

3. She didn't really want to play an encore (She said so the night before)

4. She didn't have any encore pieces ready (She played a second encore after the Volodos, but it wasn't an encore piece)

Basically, she played the piece per Amos' request, and that's a true beast!

ps

Happy April Fool's Day! (no plans for this fool though :/ )

Should I write about this past Spring Break awesomeness?