Fantasia

Yuja Wang (piano)Deutsche Grammophon 479 0052 ***

Chinese pianist Yuja Wang (born 1987) is still young enough to be an entrant at the next Dublin International Piano Competition in 2015. But she won't be there, of course, because for the past 10 years or so she's been playing with major orchestras and in leading halls around the world. Her latest CD is a collection of her favourite, mostly romantic encores. Rachmaninov and Scriabin dominate – the growls and sparkle of the former's Étude-tableau in A minor, Op 39 No 6 set the tone at the start – and there are arrangements by Liszt, Cziffra, Horowitz, Staub and Sgambati. There's room for just a single Scarlatti sonata and a single Chopin Waltz. You'll find lots of high jinks in Dukas's Sorcerer's Apprentice and Saint-Saëns's Danse Macabre. But it's actually the Russian repertoire which comes closest to the atmosphere of a concert encore. url.ie/57as