This evening I went with friends to see the Berlin Philharmonic. It was all wonderful.<\/p>\n
But when Yuja Wang came out to play Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2, it all went somewhere far beyond wonderful. I don’t think I’ve ever had such a powerful experience at an orchestral performance.<\/p>\n
Prokofiev’s second piano concerto is a work of intense emotion. He wrote it in memory of a close friend who had committed suicide, and he essentially wrote it twice — the second time after the original orchestral score was destroyed in a fire following the Russian revolution.<\/p>\n
Yuja Wang played the piece as though she was possessed. It was astonishing to see and hear so much emotional power flow from a single human being, particularly one so young. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the orchestra and conductor Paavo Jarvi clearly understood that something extraordinary was happening, and they rose to the occasion magnificently. The interaction between pianist, conductor, orchestra and enraptured audience was a thing of pure beauty.<\/p>\n
It was one of those moments that make you realize how truly fortunate you are to be alive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This evening I went with friends to see the Berlin Philharmonic. It was all wonderful. But when Yuja Wang came out to play Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2, it all went somewhere far beyond wonderful. I don’t think I’ve ever had such a powerful experience at an orchestral performance. Prokofiev’s second piano concerto is a … Continue reading “One of those moments”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16044"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16044"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16046,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16044\/revisions\/16046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}