Review | Meeting at the Virtuosic Duo Piano Junction

Santa Barbara has been fortunate to bear witness to the wonder of pianist Yuja Wang from her formative days through her continuing majestic career trajectory. Now 38, Wang is now considered one of the world’s finest living pianists and her numerous performances in Santa Barbara have spanned a variety of contexts.

Let us count the ways. After her local debut in UCSB Arts & Lecture’s “Hear and Now” series at Hahn Hall, back in 2009, she appeared in a bedazzling German repertoire solo recital at the Granada and twice in fruitful partnership with violinist Leonidas Kavakos. Last week in a sold-out Granada show, sponsored by A&L, she added yet another format to the local list, in a dynamic and creatively programmed piano duo tete a tete with another fine young-ish pianist, Iceland’s Vikingur Ólafsson.

As could be predicted, the keyboardists — perched on concert grand pianos with the players in the epicenter — delivered on their preceding reputations as virtually unassailable virtuosos, here in the exponentially larger sound of two pianos soaring and whispering. But what gave the evening extra distinction was an inventive approach to programming, in which the standard go-to scores from Schubert (the glowing “Fantasia in F minor for Four Hands”) and the overly long Rachmaninoff “Symphonic Dances,” to close, were nicely counterbalanced by palatable modernist morsels by Luciano Berio, John Cage, Conlon Nancarrow, John Adams and Arvo Pärt.

The recital’s first half was proved to be a model of creative, poetic and old-meets-new programming design. The brief but inviting “Wasserklavier” of Berio segued without pause into the Schubert, deftly realized by these fine and subtle virtuosic players. Then we were delivered back to the land of 20th century mavericks, but in palatable bite size pieces. Cage’s “Experiences, No. 1” reminded us of the supposedly iconoclastic composer’s gentle and detached lyricism with his keyboard writing — often echoing his reverence for Erik Satie. The Cage melted into Nancarrow’s slightly tango-fied “Study No. 6.” Nancarrow, the expatriate visionary who wrote bedazzling and complex player piano studies in his Mexico City home, was another hero of Cage’s, making the crossfade meaningful in more than just a musical sense.

The highlight of the set, and the entire evening, arrived with Adams’s ecstatic and strange variation on the minimalist theme, “Hallelujah Junction.” The piece, named after an actual two-horse town near Reno, where Adams has a place, is a wild ride of a contemporary piano duo score. Each piano part, sometimes colluding and sometimes colliding, conspires towards a semi-chaotic catharsis towards the end, then falls into a hypnotic reverie before revving up to a beautifully clangorous finale. A standing ovation was more than in order.

Performances of Adams’ exciting tour de force tend to be rare and, when boldly played, memorable, as when Jeremy Denk and Connor Hannick threw themselves into the score at a Music Academy of the West gala a few years ago. Chalk up another memorable performance at the junction, at the Granada last week.

As impressive as the second half of the concert was, with a deceptively simple and short Pärt prayer of a piece, “Hymn to a Great City,” leading into the mottled landscape of the Rach epic, it seemed anticlimactic compared to the beautifully sculpted first half.

The pianists, who appeared to be thoroughly enjoying each other’s musical company, returned for three encores performed on the same bench, piano four hands-style. Two more fervent dances, by Dvorák and Brahms, eased into a calmer graceful exit strategy with Brahms’ “Waltz in A-flat Major.”

The Wang/ Ólafsson meeting was, needless to say, a very full and pianistic encounter, from two who understand that world with uncommon depth and evolving curiosity.