Once you get past the
glossy airbrushed photos of the artist
and the curious abstract graphics that
adorn the liner booklet to read Jed
Distler’s mildly informative text, you’ll
realise that Lang Lang has some personal
things to say about the works he performs
here.
He says that the Mozart
sonata, K.330 made him realise how much
he loved playing the piano and that
it always offers him hope. He also points
to the challenge of playing in tempo
in Mozart. His chosen basic tempo for
the first movement, Allegro moderato,
is well judged on the whole. Admittedly
it gives him the freedom that is required
to exploit the lighter side of Mozart’s
writing, with precisely articulated
trills perhaps hinting at slight frivolity
along the way.
Clifford Curzon once
remarked that the real test of any pianist’s
skill was found in a Mozart slow movement:
needing to unify the ideas, maintain
some momentum with evenness of tone
and all the time explore the expressive
depths of the writing. Lang Lang’s account
is sober without being dour, as it could
easily become, and he does display a
care for the scale of his performance.
Yes, it’s kept simple to emphasise the
internal beauty of the music, and some
degree of profundity is captured in
his appropriately soft singing tone.
It’s only really made more effective
though by the contrast that is felt
with the closing Allegretto. Again,
crispness is all pervasive, but perhaps
a bit more humour should be there too.
Recorded at fairly close range, the
piano sound is rather on the dry side.
You don’t get an awful lot of warmth
or reverberation coming through either.
Chopin’s third piano
sonata presents Lang Lang with a much
larger-scale work to come to grips with.
Fortunately, now the piano has much
more full-toned presence than in the
Mozart. His playing of the first movement
possesses some ability in capturing
the work’s many shifting nuances of
light and shade. Around 3’00" in
perhaps the fingering is a little indistinct
to be ideal, but later on the effectiveness
of Lang Lang’s pedalling brings some
space for the notes to breathe as they
should. The brief Scherzo second movement
– Chopin’s showpiece written for Parisian
audiences – is despatched with amazing
fleetness of the fingers at first before
heading into its more contemplative
main subject. The grand yet reflective
third movement Largo tests Lang Lang’s
resources still further. He does take
a very broad view of it and in my opinion
it’s too broad a view. Whilst it’s nice
that sonorities are given time to register,
more than once my listening notes questioned
the overall direction that the movement
was being taken in. There’s no doubt
that things progress more naturally
in the finale. Lang Lang does rise to
the demands of exuberant virtuosity
with ease, carried along by Chopin’s
irrepressible presto non tanto.
Schumann’s Kinderszenen
seems a natural choice for inclusion
on a recording built around the artist’s
memories of music from childhood. This
series of delightful miniatures comes
across from Lang Lang with a certain
sameness in the tone of his playing.
He can make pointed over-emphases of
chords or pauses (no.1), not find as
much that is curious in no. 2 of the
set as others do. He does launch into
‘catch me if you can’ (no.3) with some
gusto and you might take his ‘happiness’
(no.5) to be merely ‘contentment’. The
‘important event’ of no.6 is certainly
imposing, though taken at a more relaxed
tempo than that adopted by pianists
such as Clara Haskil. Her sense of dreaming
is also more wistful than Lang’s in
no.7. He is apt to linger about a bit.
His ‘Knight of the hobby-horse’ gallops
along with bashful enthusiasm – creating
a good foil for the serious mood that
follows. The fright he finds in no.11
is all too low key – greater contrast
within the writing could have been made.
His image painting of a child falling
asleep (no.12) is sensitively handled
and has poetry about it. As does the
last of the set, ‘The poet speaks’,
but this is a rather prosaic poet and
not one that hails forth in pithy verse.
If was not aware of
it before then the presence of Liszt’s
Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2 on the bonus
CD brings home the shadow that Vladimir
Horowitz’s presence casts over this
recital. The Mozart, Chopin and Schumann
items were all mainstays of his repertoire,
and all recorded for DG too. Horowitz’
Liszt arrangement takes unashamed liberties
with the original in terms of emphasis
and ornamentation. It calls for virtuosity
in its dispatch, which Horowitz undoubtedly
brought to it. So too does Lang Lang
in no uncertain terms. Just one thing
worries me slightly though, the booklet
states that Lang Lang "bases his
performance upon Horowitz’s Carnegie
Hall recital recording from 25 February
1953". Surely, if I wanted Horowitz
in 1953 then I’d hunt it down and hear
it in preference to a modern emulation
of it? This might not worry you so much
though as it is so easy to just get
absorbed in the fireworks that are on
display. A clap-trap, yes, but one that’s
intended to be in the best sense of
the word.
Lang Lang is a gifted
pianist who mixes thoughtful and showy
elements in his playing. This recital
highlights his growing artistic maturity,
even if he does not yet fully meet the
challenge posed by other artists.
Evan Dickerson
Lang Lang (piano) 
