A Formerly Emerging Piano Master’s Return

We knew her when. 

Much-acclaimed and globally booked classical pianist Yuja Wang has thankfully returned to Santa Barbara on many occasions over the years, a list to which she adds an appearance with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, on Thursday, April 23, at The Granada Theatre. But the list goes back to an auspicious and precocious performance at Hahn Hall back in 2009, when UCSB Arts & Lectures brought then-22-year-old but fast-rising pianist to town as part of its then-fledgling “Hear and Now” series.

She has since shown up in the area many times, including as concert soloist with the London Philharmonic, as a Steinway champion at the Music Academy of the West, in a captivating solo recital with Schumann’s Kreisleriana, and Beethoven’s Hammerklavier at the Granada in 2016 and in a thrilling two-piano evening with Víkingur Ólafsson just last season. 

In her upcoming Granada encounter, Wang takes on a double duty, as pianist and also leader of the ensemble, performing piano concertos by Chopin and Prokofiev, No. 1 and 2, respectively. We last heard the Mahler Chamber Orchestra at the Ojai Music Festival in 2024, when it featured — and was also led by — another commanding pianist, Mitsuko Uchida.

Prokofiev gets his due spotlight on the upcoming concert, with the inclusion of his Symphony No. 1 (listen here), a cheerful neo-classical work in sharp contrast with his dramatic Piano Concerto No. 2 (hear, as performed by Wang, here). Begun in 1912 and finished in 1923, the work was dedicated to the memory of a friend from the St. Petersburg Conservatory who had died by suicide.

Born in Beijing in 1987 (with the Chinese name Wáng Yǔjiā), Wang studied at Beijing’s Conservatory of Music, in Canada and ended up at the Curtis Institute, under noted pianist Gary Graffman. Her career more or less launched into its upward trajectory in 2007, after subbing for Martha Argerich, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. She earned the coveted Musical America’s Artist of the Year plaudit in 2017, and among her highlights so far was her featured role in the raucously engaging and playfully pop-music-tapping John Adams’s Must the Devil Have all the Good Tunes?, recorded by the Gustavo Dudamel–led Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2020 (listen here).

Among other areas of specialty, Wang has had a strong connection to the music, solo and orchestral, of Chopin. As she told me in an interview some years back, “I’ve always loved Chopin. His sense of color, how to write for the piano, how to layer voices — it’s all unique and brilliantly done, and I find it completely inspiring. But there are many, many other composers I admire as well — Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Adams, Gluck, Bach (JS), Ligeti…. Way too many to begin to list them all.”

A New Yorker for years, when not traveling the world, Wang has a simple recipe for the good life: “Making and enjoying great music. And fabulous meals after each concert.”

UCSB Arts & Lectures presents Yuja Wang & Mahler Chamber Orchestra on Thursday, April 23, 7 p.m., at The Granada Theatre (1214 State St.). For tickets and information, see artsandlectures.ucsb.edu or granadasb.org.