Playing with Fire: An Immersive Odyssey with Yuja Wang

In the virtual presence of renowned pianist Yuja Wang, the immersive installation Playing with Fire offers a new kind of concert experience. The chosen repertoire and the artist’s virtuosic gestures generate visual worlds that push the boundaries of musical performance and create a fascinating dialogue between the real and the digital, where sound becomes image and space comes alive with interpretation.

AT THE HEART OF INTERPRETATION

Equipped with a headset, the audience attends a virtual concert by the famous pianist Yuja Wang. At the center of the stage is a Steinway Spirio piano, acting as the bridge between two realms: the concert hall and the artist’s inner visions. This virtual piano recital offers an unprecedented closeness to the musician, allowing a deep appreciation of the stakes and intensity of musical interpretation. Visitors are free to walk around the piano and can observe the performer’s gestures, concentration, and the way music comes to life under her fingers.

SENSORY CORRESPONDENCES

Yuja Wang’s recital highlights the evocative power of music, where every note, like a spark, ignites the imagination. The performed pieces create visual tableaux where poetry, painting, and music engage in dialogue with Yuja Wang’s personal history. Renewing the act of listening while engaging the gaze, Playing with Fire turns “the correspondence of the senses” into experimental ground for a new form of concert.

THE IMAGERY OF FIRE

From Bach to Prokofiev, the works selected by Yuja Wang for this recital evoke the various forms of incandescence explored by Gaston Bachelard in his Psychoanalysis of Fire: the primordial and creative fire in Stravinsky’s Firebird, the sacred and transcendent fire of Bach, the devilish will-o’-the-wisps of Liszt, the gentle contemplative flame of Debussy’s Clair de Lune, crackling by the water’s edge, and the destructive fire of cannons in Prokofiev’s War Sonata.

Playing with Fire is written and directed by acclaimed film and immersive director Pierre-Alain Giraud (winner of the Best Immersive Work Award at Cannes 2024) and produced by VIVE Arts and award-winning immersive and narrative-driven production company Atlas V in collaboration with production partner Lightroom, a London-based home for spectacular immersive shows from the world’s leading creative minds. Yuja Wang collaborated with Pierre-Alain Giraud and Icelandic visual artist Gabríela Friðriksdóttir – longtime creative partners whose work has been presented at the Venice Biennale, Lyon Biennale, and Frieze Art Fair – as well as Academy Award-winning sound designer Nicolas Becker. The experience was created using 360-degree volumetric video capture and recordings of Yuja’s playing and voice, combined with advanced spatial audio, surrealistic animated visuals and the cutting edge of MR immersion using VIVE Focus Vision headsets.

Produced by VIVE Arts and Atlas V, with production partner Lightroom

Creative team: Yuja Wang, lead artist; Pierre-Alain Giraud, writer, director & visual director; Gabríela Friðriksdóttir, visual director & original artwork; Nicolas Becker, sound designer; Philippe Berthomé, lighting designer; Laurence Fontaine, installation designer

Technical team: Studio Albyon

Yuja Wang appears courtesy of Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft.

About Yuja Wang

Pianist Yuja Wang is celebrated for her charismatic artistry, emotional honesty and captivating stage presence. She has performed with the world’s most venerated conductors, musicians and ensembles, and is renowned not only for her virtuosity, but her spontaneous and lively performances, famously telling The New York Times, “I firmly believe every program should have its own life, and be a representation of how I feel at the moment.”

Yuja was born into a musical family and began studying the piano at the age of six. She received advanced training in Canada and at the Curtis Institute of Music under Gary Graffman. Her international breakthrough came in 2007, when she replaced Martha Argerich as soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Two years later, she signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon and has since established her place among the world’s leading artists, with a succession of critically acclaimed performances and albums. Her recordings have garnered multiple awards, including five Grammy nominations and her first Grammy win for Best Classical Instrumental Solo with her 2023 release of “The American Project.” For this she also won an Opus Klassik award in the Concerto category. 