Lang Lang - Chopin: The Piano Concertos
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Free Music Notes for Chopin: The Piano Concertos
Free Music Review: A new Rubenstein is amongst us !!!
Hit: 5 Stars
Bravo ! Bravo !!! Lang Lang is also a Chopin maestro. Phrasing extremely sensitive. A velvet glove masterpiece recording. Only the great Artur Rubinstein could match this style.Free Music Review: great recording.
Hit: 5 Stars
I had to buy the CD because I went his concert. Although it is not like alive concert, it bring back what I listened in Cleveland. Very happy.Free Music Review: What a Gift!
Hit: 5 Stars
Lang Lang plays from the soul! Chopin should never be played any other way. I highly recommend this CD.Free Music Review: stirring performance
Hit: 4 Stars
I thought the interpretation was a stirring performance. May be a little too melodramatic for some.Free Music Review: Soft and Willowy Chopin, with beautiful interludes
Hit: 3 Stars
The teaming up of the illustrious Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Zubin Mehta and Lang Lang are nothing less than starry.
In terms of performance, it is quite another matter. The overall effect of these two works as recorded here is bass-heavy, gloomy and dreamy in turns, which has everything to do with accoustics, and without the requisite sense of direction, which has everything to do with the performers themselves.
One wonders what Lang Lang or Zubin Mehta was trying to say in these pieces, except that they are involved in making a jumble of beautiful sounds, and beautiful they indeed are, though the sounds are most of the time uninvolved and distant. Certain passages of cadenzas do shine out, though, but some how they seem more sporadic than bridging.
The No. 2 Concerto in particular suffers from this lack of direction and involvement. All too often it sounded like a classy display of pyro-technique by the soloist and orchestra in turn. At other times, it sounded like an elegant drawing-room piece, without doing any justification to the composer's style and his intentions.
Lang Lang did perform good Chopin before this recording - namely, with Lawrence Foster some years ago in a live performance available on Youtube. And I have been to a live performance of that work by him early this year.
Granted that Chopin is NOT his best choice; even so, he has said that Chopin is one of his favourite composers. One has only to hope that his love for Chopin would somehow bring him back home to the realisation that not all composers are to be played with the same style of interpretation, the same tone colour, and the same approach, however original and genuine that approach is.
What Lang Lang needs is not maturity - it is realisation of musical style. Clearly, he hasn't been taught much of that at conservatory. One could only hope that he picks it up in good time during his performance career.