This Week’s 2 Best of 8Classical Music Moments on YouTube
It’s not often that a video makes you want to watch an entire Beethoven symphony glued to a computer screen. But this recording of the Seventh Symphony, by the celebrated conductor Carlos Kleiber leading the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, is irresistible in both the freshness and beauty of the music-making, and the electric expressiveness of Kleiber’s conducting. Especially fascinating are the moments where this temperamental conductor holds back to listen. Watch, for instance, the care with which he shapes the pulse, then his inward pause just when the melody springs free. CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM
The Chinese piano virtuoso Yuja Wang loves to play encores for her typically excited audiences, even after concerto performances. Recently, after performing Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto with the National Youth Orchestra of China on its debut program at Carnegie Hall, Ms. Wang played two of them, starting with the daunting final movement of Prokofiev’s Seventh Piano Sonata. This perpetual-motion music is driven by repetitive, leaping chords that whiz past in a jumpy 7/8 meter. For me, Ms. Wang’s white-hot performance was just too fast, too hectic. To my mind, the young pianist Conrad Tao nailed this finale in a video for the New York Times’s “In Performance” series. His tempo, though plenty fast, is reined in just enough to allow for bracing clarity and rhythmic bite. Inner voices and crucial details come through. Listen to the way Mr. Tao, brings out a fleeting melodic bit in the left hand, like some taunting intrusion coming out of nowhere. What fun. ANTHONY TOMMASINI
Själv har jag haft den stora förmånen att få uppleva Yuja Wanf live (Sthlm förra året)
