Yuja Wang

I've "wasted" a lot of my time on Cziffra's "drivel"..

I have to put my head above the parapet and state my opinion that the Cziffra (improvised) arrangments are a wonderful relic of a bygone age of virtuosi. Now they clearly aren't fully formed musical masterworks (compare Liszt's arrangements - he probably largely improvised them and exercised some level of subsequent editorial control to increase their coherence). But I'd argue they have to be seen for what they are i.e. improvisations created by a pianist with stellar technique. When a pianist has that level of technique, it might appear in the eyes of ordinary mortals to be showing off, whereas in reality I think it is self-expression in a form which is completely natural to that pianist. Cziffra himself said (I'm paraphrasing, appropriately :lol: , as I can't put my hands on the exact quote right now) "an improvisation is a musical thought insufficiently formed to last into eternity".

What I will say about a performer taking them onto stage is that I firmly believe anyone brave or foolish enough to do so absolutely has to play them as improvisations and not as concrete urtextised pieces of music; whether Wang did so in this case I'm in no position to know, but for me her performance lacks many nuances of the original.