Lang Lang - Chopin: The Piano Concertos
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Free Music Notes for Chopin: The Piano Concertos
Free Music Review: Beautiful playing, but the overall feeling is dull and lacking in brio
Hit: 3 Stars
It's startling to read in the product description that Lang Lang has sold only 100,000 CDs in the U.S., despite his sold-out concerts and mass popularity. (Perhaps downloads account for the small disc sales.) On the four occasions that I've heard him, I was impressed by his sensitivity in Chopin, not to mention his overall command of touch and technique. At heart I think Lang Lang is a lyrical player, and although he can sound like a fish out of water when it comes to traditional German style, Chopin affords a lot of personal leeway (this latitude has also benefited his compatriot Yundi Li).
The Chopin performances on this CD will not suit anyone looking for extravert fireworks and nervous energy a la Argerich, or for the noble command of Michelangeli and Pollini. Zubin Mehta establishes a conventional framework that isn't high in energy, and the soloist enters Concerto #2 in a ruminative mood. Despite the ease of his passagework, Lang Lang phrases almost with hesitancy. The slow movement of #2 is sung gently, and here his phrasing seems just right in its balance of simplicity and freedom. The waltz finale feels too restrained, however, and lacks brio and spring.
Concerto #1 is deservedly more popular, but I wish Mehta didn't start out sounding so uninvolved. Lang Lang's playing is also too relaxed, lovely as it is. Not every note should sound like a raindrop. The slow movement of #1 is hushed but loses tension as it goes along. Keeping the line taut at such a soft volume is difficult. Heard as pure playing, however, Lang Lang again shows how nuanced his touch is. The finale is marked Rondo vivace, and one wishes for a lot more vivaciousness here. Only in the development section does the soloist find reserves of power and depth that make you pay attention.
In all, this doesn't sound like a young man's Chopin to me, and Mehta's dull accompaniment can't be the only reason.
Free Music Review: I had higher expectations...somewhat disappointed.
Hit: 3 Stars
We recently heard Lang Langplaying life in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam together with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, one of the two concerto's.
That was an experience, so much different from what I hear on this recording!
Free Music Review: The show business is more alive than ever!
Hit: 2 Stars
After the WW2, the arouse of countless Festivals around the world (when van Cliburn won the famous Tchaikovsky Festival, 1958) allowed to achieve the stardom to numerous artists (like a dream make come true) and, at the same time, to promote new raising promises into the classical tradition, something never seen before. Warsaw, Busoni, Queen of Belgium, Leeds, Van Cliburn among the most important ones.
So, the classical universe began to take part into countless information, specialized magazines, musical conferences, with the only goal to make the listener kept posted himself about the new figures at the great stages.
This need to satisfy the numerous audiences around the world, led to make an impressive search of new talents. The Western world was aware about the new generation of young pianists in the extinct U.R.S.S. So, the names of Kissin, Vladimir Felstman, Grigory Sokolov, Michael Plentev, Andrei Gavrilov, Alexei Sultanov added too to many raising stars from other latitudes (Perahia, Lupu, Schiff, Kocsis, Katsaris, Tirimo, Iliana Vered, Biret, John Lill, Howard, Mijail Rudy, Ivo Pogorelich) filled many musical Halls but just a bunch of them overcame the brevity of the fame.
Lang is the new musical miracle of Julliard. Owner of an enviable technique, his charisma compensates his lack of musical depth. If we think about Yundi Li, for instance, we may realize how Li is much more penetrating,restrained and even quite expressive than Lang. On the other hand, Li has devoted with major emphasis to give recitals rather than Concerts. If you watched Lang in the famous master classes dictated by Barenboim, you will understand Lang is not yet prepared to take up a set of Beethoven's sonatas, for instance.
I would like to think to myself Lang will have to make more recitals and chamber music in order to improve his gifts and skills, and dive into the soul of the score in case he really wishes to transcend the brevity of the glory, because he has become at this moment the most widely known of the classical show business around the world, but this acknowledgement is a double razor weapon, and to make a thoughtful reflection around the trajectory of the great soloists of the recent past.
To play Chopin is far from being easy. It demands a wide rank of livings, nostalgic mood and sumptuous praising. Technically irreproachable but without poetry and personal expression.
Free Music Review: There Are Better Chopin Piano Concerto Recordings Available
Hit: 2 Stars
Subtlety and comprehension are words which don't exist for Lang Lang, judging from the live performances I have seen from him over the years. It's certainly true for a live performance of the second Chopin Piano Concerto in F minor that I heard earlier this week, here in New York City at Carnegie Hall, with him accompanied by conductor Zubin Mehta and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. He seemed to rush through the first movement (Maestoso), barely allowing the venerable Viennese orchestra to keep pace. The only distinguished playing was, surprisingly, in the second movement (Larghetto), in which his performance was remarkably quite restrained. After the applause ended at the end of the performance, he concluded his appearance with a Rachmaninoffesque interpretation of a long-time Chopin favorite, the Polonaise in A Flat Major (Or rather, as I remarked to an usher at the time, Lang Lang was demonstrating that he was ready and willing to step in for keyboard musician and arranger Guy Babylon as the newest member of the Elton John Band, playing the Chopin piece as if it was the Elton John classic "Bennie and the Jets".).
As for this recording, I'm not really impressed. Of course the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra sounds magnificient. But I think there is something missing in Lang Lang's less than subtle approach to both Chopin piano concerti. Technically and lyrically, his performances of both piano concerti are fine. But I wouldn't call this a distinguished recording simply because Lang Lang lacks the empathy I have either seen or heard from pianists as diverse as Claudio Arrau, Maurizio Pollini, Murray Perahia, or Lang Lang's fellow countryman, Yundi Li. He's definitely a keyboard wizard with respect to his technical mastery of the piano keyboard, but he's not someone who can play with as much compassion or understanding of these works that I have heard from the pianists I've cited or others.