Yuja Wang is one of the world’s most celebrated classical pianists. A prize-winning featured soloist with top orchestras, the 39-year-old Chinese-born American performer is a prodigious and unusual talent in the largely white, male and stale space of classical music. In London’s Southbank Centre, however, Wang is also underwater, on fire and floating in space.
In a darkened room containing a self-playing Steinway Spirio piano, a hologram of Wang mimes virtuosic interpretations of Debussy’s Clair de Lune, Liszt’s Feux Follets and Ravel’s Jeux d’Eau while the air around her transforms from a seascape of floating jellyfish to a lake of fiery lava and an impressionistic cathedral. This 45-minute experience, Playing with Fire, is essentially a concert recording embellished by virtual reality (VR) headsets, and is the latest in the rapidly expanding world of immersive experiences.
“There’s space for both virtual reality and real life,” said Pierre-Alain Giraud, the experience’s director. “In a real concert, it’s never repeated and you have unpredictability. Here, you’re put into places you could never be. You can also never be that close to Yuja to see her technicality.”
Sliding on the weighty VR headset, it takes a few minutes to become accustomed to the slightly nauseating visuals that crowd in. Wang, dressed in a dizzying black-and-white striped gown, takes her place on the piano stool and launches into a tender rendition of Jeux d’Eau while artist Gabriela Friðriksdóttir’s cartoonish neon jellyfish sway in rhythm.
Then the sea recedes and we’re back on sunkissed land for the pentatonic melodies of Debussy’s Bruyères. Flaming phoenixes accompany the melodrama of Stravinsky’s Infernal Dance from The Firebird, before a cavernous gothic cathedral frames Bach’s meditative Chorale Prelude and bomb-dropping drones punctuate Prokofiev’s histrionic Piano Sonata No 7, the second of his “war trilogy”.
You could see this sensory stimulation as a symptom of our attention-addled society. Yet the hybrid experience is surprisingly moving. As I get my VR legs and move around, I notice other visitors as reflective avatars of the surrounding animation – glowing blue or gold, textured in feathers or stone – and I can walk right up to the piano and observe each of Wang’s keystrokes. Even though she isn’t there, the warm sound of the £300,000 Steinway with its pre-recorded movements is convincing.
“It’s an amazing example of technological advancement but at its heart is human creativity,” said Samantha King, head of programme at Vive Arts, one of the concert’s tech partners. “We recorded [Wang] playing the repertoire in London but her fingers were like hummingbirds and we couldn’t capture them, so she then had to be filmed by 70 cameras in France, playing on a green keyboard, to map both sound and visuals.”
Wang’s playing style is often described as “fiery” and the concert moves through different iterations of this element, from life-giving hearths to all-consuming terror. It’s purposely vague and ultimately inessential to understand. It’s a £26 a ticket for a 45-minute experience, but the real value of this show comes from its potential to break down the often elitist feel of a concert hall.
During her final number, Chopin’s Waltz in C sharp minor, we are invited to take our headsets off and witness the ghost of Wang’s hand play through one of the first pieces she learned as a child. “When this ran at the Paris Philharmonie last year, it was wonderful seeing children dance,” said Giraud. “You could see them engaging with something totally new.” While no one dances in my group of two dozen adults, there’s an awed silence when the piece ends, the feeling of having witnessed something magical together – even if it never really happened.
Illustration by Oscar Ingham for The Observer