…Yuja Wang… has all the equipment to be one of the most exciting pianists of her generation. As well as a stunning technique she has a fabulous range of sonority and colour… the two Ligeti Etudes, especially 'Fanfares', suit her dazzling fingerwork perfectly. Pianistically, parts of her Liszt Sonata are extraordinary, with blistering octaves, razor-sharp articulation and a wonderful tonal richness.

Curtis-trained under Gary Graffman, Wang tells us in an accompanying DVD of her special love for music of drama and turbulence and how ever since first hearing Pollini's recording of the Chopin Etudes she dreamt of recording for DG.
In Scriabin's Second Sonata she is beautifully sensitive to the moods, whether tranquil and starlit or tempestuous, reflecting the composer's love of the Baltic Sea. She is fiery but never reckless in Chopin's Second Sonata, off like the proverbial greyhound at the first doppio movimento, and offers a dramatic bass emphasis at the climax of the heaven-storming development.
Her finale is truly sotto voce yet with the widest variety of touch and expression, and for the most part her playing, while sharply individual, is free from all distorting idiosyncrasy or mannerism.
You wont hear anything on the scale of Richter or Gilels in the Liszt Sonata but on the other hand Wang is young, wonderfully talented and trained, superbly recorded and, if this disc is anything to go by, with the world at her feet. As a crowning touch her Ligeti Etudes are both musicianly and dazzlingly incisive. In the words of the publicist, 'a star is born'.

…22-year-old Yuja Wang is a wondrously gifted pianist whose debut album… suggests a combination of blazing technique and a rare instinct for poetry. In Scriabin's Second Sonata she is beautifully sensitive to the moods, whether tranquil and starlit or tempestuous, reflecting the composer's love of the Baltic Sea. She is fiery but never reckless in Chopin's Second Sonata... As a crowning touch her Ligeti Etudes are both musicianly and dazzlingly incisive. In the words of the publicist, "a star is born".

The opening movement of Chopin’s Second Sonata certainly identifies qualities of youthful impetuosity, power and dexterity.

The Scriabin (sonata no 2) flows nicely; in the Liszt B minor sonata she’s no empty virtuoso. A talent worth watching.