In January 2023 at Carnegie Hall, Yuja Wang played all four Rachmaninoff piano concertos plus the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini in a single evening, paused for 20 minutes while medics treated an audience member who collapsed, then sat back down, finished the marathon, and played an encore. This episode traces how a pianist builds that kind of bulletproof focus, starting with a girl in Beijing in 1987 who chose the piano over her mother's dance ambitions because she preferred to sit down.

We follow her from the Central Conservatory at seven, to Canada at 11, to the Curtis Institute at 15 where Gary Graffman recognized intellect and taste rather than mere mechanical speed, and to the 2007 night she replaced Martha Argerich with the Boston Symphony and became famous overnight. The conversation covers her Deutsche Grammophon contract, her str ...