Like stepping into a giant lava lamp
“If you enjoyed the immersive orchestral experience presented by the London Philharmonia at the Southbank recently,” said the blurb, “whatever you do be sure to see the absolutely incredible ‘Playing with Fire’, the virtual reality experience with the Grammy Award-winning worldwide sensation that is Chinese-born American pianist Yuja Wang”. As my 13-year-old embarks on her second piano exam, we were intrigued. And as we had enjoyed the previous immersive experience, perhaps this was going to provide key inspiration for her, writes Eleanor Thorn.
It is worth mulling over the multi-faceted nature of the title alone. Yuja Wang says she chose pieces for this installation that evoke the sensual nature of childhood. The nuances of play and the energy, creative, warming yet potentially destructive nature of fire are all here in the experience that awaited us.
We stepped into a room with around twenty others, filled with bold graphics reminiscent of Mr Doodle’s recent black-and-white display at the Shard. Right in the middle sat a lovely Steinway Spirio – a clever, self-playing piano – resting on a circle that looked a bit like the inside of an eye. It’s quite amazing how much care went into such a striking setting, even though we mostly missed it while wearing our headsets. I later found out that artistic director Pierre-Alain Giraud (winner of Best Immersive Work at Cannes 2024) designed it this way to help us glide gently from the real world into virtual reality.
“Walk as freely as you like around the room, but don’t touch the piano,” we are told. “The closer to the piano you are, the more real Yuja Wang – present digitally in this other realm – and her piano-playing will become.” We donned headsets and they pressed play… tipping us into a world of dreams and surrealism, inspired by the fiery nature of the pianist and the nine pieces she pre-performed for this: Ravel, Debussy, Stravinsky, Bach, a fiendish “Feux follets” by Liszt, Prokofiev, Brahms and Chopin. A passionate outpouring of notes.
The project has been created by an impressively international team of creatives and technical engineers from France (VIVE Arts, Atlas V, Nicholas Becker, Antoine Martin, Giraud…) and Iceland (Gabriela Fridriksdottir).
This is like stepping into a giant lava lamp. At first we are underwater, walking in the deep sea, with sea creatures swimming around. Other visitors appear as strange skittle-like chess pieces, smaller in scale than oneself. Their form mutates, with each changing composition, from glass-like to dark pillars or vine-like structures. The piano and image of Wang playing seem below me and out of reach, and without being able to see my feet I feel a sense of vertigo that walking becomes an impossibility. I am reduced to half pigeon-steps, as I strive to inch closer to the piano. All around, the landscape evolves to desert-like, sky-like, mountainous. Gaudí-esque towers rise up to then become consumed by fire. Huge moons climb to become giant octopuses. Drones look far too like the killing-machines in use today… but this was probably during Prokofiev’s War Sonata. I preferred the phoenix, the giant primordial masks and strange humanoid creatures encircling me. I reminded myself I’d entered a rectangular room with a horizontal floor… and when I did get closer to the piano the vertigo barely diminished. I’d lost my daughter who was more stable on her feet. On removing the headset, it was not dancing, nor watching the piano keys play, but finding her that mattered. She’d not been lifted off by an octopus tentacle…
This is a very intense experience. Did it make me feel the music differently? All my energies went on trying to move yet barely able to, the stuff of many a nightmare of mine. I was admiring the visual feast, marvelling at how it has all been made possible and the music… Well, I was in it but barely hearing it… awash with the full force of the visuals. It is “a dream come true”, Wang is quoted as saying, true in more ways than one. My daughter had not kept her headset on the whole time and told me others somehow were able to stroll around. I cannot fathom how!
The aim is to introduce young and new audiences to this artform and shatter the word ‘classical’ altogether to prove the music can be anything but. For this aim to be realised, the ticket price needs to be lower. This is exciting, groundbreaking stuff. Your ride through the experience will likely be different: each individual will feel this uniquely. I saw jellyfish and my daughter saw dolphins. What will you see and will you feel the music more?! Arrive before your allotted time. This is more show than exhibition.
Royal Festival Hall until 3rd January.
Booking: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/playing-with-fire/
