Yuja Wang (piano)Deutsche Grammophon 477 8795 ***

23-year-old Beijing-born, American-trained Yuja Wang’s new CD is a multi-layered musical sandwich. Three towering virtuoso statements (Stravinsky’s Three Movements from

Petrushka

, Brahms’s

Paganini

Variations and Ravel’s

La valse

) are separated by the lightness of two of the best- known of Scarlatti sonatas, K380 in E and K466 in F. The performances are delightfully athletic in a puppyish kind of way. Wang offers no end of moment-by-moment thrills, and her style of playing has a freshness which guarantees that the next enticing distraction is never going to be that far away. The very immediacy of the playing is attractive, but it’s also a limitation, and the whole is never quite as persuasive as the detailing of the parts might suggest. Prospective purchasers should also be aware that she uses Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli’s truncated, re-ordered version of the Brahms variations. See url.ie/57as