“LOVE LIFE”, instructs the projected, painted writing as Yuja Wang takes the stage. And we do, for soon towering images of green gardens in the rain envelop us on all sides, along with the glistening sounds of Ravel’s Jeux d’eau. Does the alliance of live music and projected paintings work? In this case, it becomes a complete artform in itself – and possibly the most stunning thing I’ve seen this year.
Wang, an undisputed superstar of the piano, first joined forces with David Hockney at The Lightroom last year in an experimental multimedia performance (from which critics were banned, supposedly). It went so well that they are back for more.
This is no average meeting, but two artists at the very top of their game, finding common ground in a space beyond the different senses. Music and images have been combined in different ways ever since silent film first needed improvised accompaniment. But Yuja x Hockney reaches a new level: sensory overwhelm in the very best way.
Maybe the secret is how well matched the pieces and the pictures are, and the way the projections are varied. For the opening Ravel, images are built brushstroke by brushstroke, then given animated rain. Later, the vast internal vistas of Rachmaninov’s “Élégie”, from his Morceaux de fantaisie Op.3, meets a slow sweep through Hockney’s vermillion, carmine and gold evocation of another giant landscape, the Grand Canyon. There’s a bright interior full of chunky shapes for Ligeti’s Hungarian Rock and a simple church window for Bach’s Ich ruf zu dir. The flowing intimacy of Blumenthal’s “Etude for the Left Hand” blends ideally with the blurred figures swimming in a light-dappled pool.
Wang’s programme is punctuated with scintillating pieces requiring high-voltage lightness, brilliance and power – the finale of Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 7, Liszt’s Etude “Feux Follets”, Philip Glass’s “Etude No. 6” and more – and here the pianist herself becomes the artwork. As she plays, her live image is multiplied and projected at vast size on the surrounding walls from different angles, displaying all the intent concentration on her face and the extreme agility of her fingerwork, and creating a dazzling mirror-keyboard effect in the Liszt.
Along with rock-solid rhythm and textural clarity even in the midst of a musical tornado, Wang conjures up sonic colour with her touch appropriate to each piece: silvery legatos for Ravel, organ-like resonance in Bach, or a gradual, thunderous cataclysm magnificently paced in the Prokofiev. One can’t help feel bemusement at how she manages the pedalling in such high heels; the important thing is that she does.
Hockney, who is 87, was present and the audience roared its appreciation of him and Wang. The performance was an intense, joyous hour. And one hour later she was going to do the whole thing all over again.
Yuja x Hockney continues on 6 and 7 September at 7pm and 9pm and 8 September at 6pm (Lightroom.uk)
