The room is empty, with only a Steinway Spirio grand piano in the center. Don your virtual reality headset, however, and suddenly the famed pianist Yuja Wang, dressed in a chic black-and-white-striped gown, is seated at the keyboard playing Maurice Ravel’s Jeux d’Eau. The image is so realistic that I had to lift my headset and peek out with my own eyes to be sure she wasn’t really there. Then the room began to fill with water until she was playing while submerged in the ocean, undisturbed by the jellyfish and other creatures and plants undulating around her. So begins “Playing with Fire: An Immersive Odyssey with Yuja Wang,” written by Pierre-Alain Giraud in collaboration with artist Gabríela Friðriksdóttir, at the Cité de la Musique.
I got up and walked around to immerse myself in the virtual scene and observe it from different vantage points while getting a better view of Yang and her agile fingers tickling the ivories, being careful to avoid the vague bottle-shaped images I occasionally saw around me, the avatars of other real humans in the room. Other composers whose work she performs include Chopin, Debussy, Liszt, Bach and Brahms.
The scenery changes when Yang finishes one piece and begins another, not all of them as tranquil and relaxing as the first. War raised its ugly sights and sounds with Sergei Prokofiev’s War Sonata, but I found the music itself more frightening than the images, though they amplified the feeling of menace.
The fire promised by the title of the show came with, of course, Igor Stravinsky’s feverish “Infernal Dance” from The Firebird.
This marvelous experience offers a convincing example of how sophisticated and enthralling these large-scale virtual reality presentations are becoming. I was most impressed by Yang’s virtuoso playing, but I also loved the immersive images, especially when they didn’t try to illustrate the music, as in the war scenes, but accompanied it with more abstract visuals.
The underwater and fire scenes were the most spectacular, but all were engrossing in their own way. While the music of the masters doesn’t need such gimmicks, they will certainly intrigue children and may well serve to introduce the uninitiated to the joys of classical music.
Vive la réalité virtuelle. It’s finally having its day.
Note: For another kind of musical immersion, follow or precede this installation with a visit to the fantastic exhibition “Kandinsky,” which closes on February 1, 2026, in the Musée de la Musique in the Philharmonie building next door.
See our list of Current & Upcoming Exhibitions to find out what else is happening in the Paris art world.
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