Seen and Heard
Whatever has happened to Lang Lang?
Mozart, Chopin, Schumann, Rachmaninov, Liszt, Liszt/Horowitz
Lang Lang (piano), RFH, 3.30pm, Sunday, January 23rd, 2005 (CC)
There was a time that a recital by Lang Lang excited the emotions
for all the right reasons. Here, it appeared, was a great talent
with a penchant for raising the rafters but who nevertheless could
produce meltingly beautiful results, too. (See my review of his
debut, for example.)
Since those early days, Lang Lang (still in his early twenties)
has evidently gathered a huge following. How else could he pack
out the Festival Hall on a Sunday afternoon? Yet the Mozart that
began this recital (C major, K330, a brave choice in itself given
the intimacy this music demands) was harsh (fortes could be uncomfortable)
with stabbed-at accents and badly weighted chords to close the first
movement. Lang Lang failed to get inside the slow movement; the
return of the opening exemplified the problems perfectly. The three-quavered
anacrusis figure led to a first beat that was woefully over-emphasised.
Again, the Allegretto finale was harsh rather than jaunty, with
machine-gun left-hand staccati.
So to Chopin’s great, and interpretatively problematical,
Third Sonata. Lang Lang’s pedal technique impresses –
he uses it for colour, but does not smudge. Yet the second subject
should flow more (there was more than a touch of lumpiness). By
now I was hankering after the majesty of a Pollini or the super-sensitivity
of an Uchida. Lang Lang actually lost his sense of harmonic direction
at one point, leaving Chopin sounding as if he was the one at fault.
Lang Lang the mercurial was certainly present and correct in the
Scherzo, but contrasts here were simply indulgent. Whereas Uchida
is magical in the Largo, Lang Lang is merely competent (well, usually
– there was some clumsy voicing there too). Undeniably exciting
at its close, the coda of the finale was simply not enough to erase
memories of the miscalculations that preceded it.
Post-interval Schumann was on the menu – Kinderszenen.
Lang Lang writes in his introduction to the concert that “You
need to play it as if you’re getting old and trying to remember
your youth.” Not for Lang Lang, then, you might think, and
you would be right. Over-projected top lines (right from the very
start) and a tone that could become metallic all too easily (‘Ritter
vom Steckenpferd’) distracted from the Schumannesque impulse,
while any extended passage of Innigkeit found Lang Lang merely meandering.
An impressive (at last!) Rachmaninov B flat Prelude from Op. 23
led to a disappointingly lukewarm G minor (Op. 23 No. 5). Lang Lang
used them as a bridge to the Liszt, hardly giving these two short
pieces their due.
At least Lang Lang’s sense of line improved as the Sonetta
104 del Petrarcha unfolded, and the end did tend towards the
magical. But it is the Hungarian Rhapsodies that finds
this pianist most at home, especially when given an extra layer
in a Horowitz transcription. No. 2 in C sharp minor was the case
in point here, and included a magnificent cimbalom impression, remarkable
repeated notes and a great sense of fun.
Of course there were encores, but only two. A piece I believe to
be called ‘Moon on Lake’ (it could be ‘Moon and
Lake’) was lovely, oriental with lots of Debussy sauce; Rachmaninov’s
transcription of ‘The Flight of the Bumble Bee’ was
the stuff Lang Lang must devour for breakfast.
But I left the RFH with a rather empty feeling.
Can we have the old Lang Lang back, please?
Chopin: Pollini, DG 415 346-2