Although blessed with a never-failing archive-like memory, programmes on Lang Lang's ceaseless recital tours are largely restricted to a number of staple components.
This was also the case at his recital in the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus.
Beethoven's C Major Sonata, Op.2, was followed by the Appassionata as the centrepiece of the evening, with Iberia Vol.1 by Albeniz, and Prokofiev's Sonata No. 7 in B Major, with its 'Precipitato' last movement, rendered, as expected, sufficiently 'precipitato' to inspire a full house to 'precipitato' rounds of applause, this time regaled only by one single dreamy Chopin encore, to demonstrate tellingly where his heart really lies.
Lang Lang's recital this year did not impress me so much as his last one I attended. The following comments have less to do with the purely musical aspects of his recital, than the inevitable speculation about the significance of a mass phenomenon on the musical horizon.
In fact, his recital was exactly a copy of his performance I heard last year. Such little gestures which I then thought were charming and spontaneous, like at the end of the performance patting his Steinway as if it were a horse, and offering it the flowers he was given, were now repeated exactly and all those gestures, like raising closed eyes to heaven for swooning inspiration, throwing up arms in a victory salute at the end of the brilliant ending of some bravura piece, still dominated his body language.
He is an entertainer with a brilliant and irresistible talent, but cannot yet enter into the class of a Kissin, a Schiff, a Pollini or a Brendel, let alone of the dozens of other great pianists, who are interpreters, each with their commanding insight, individuality and even wisdom. Pianistically, they can do everything Lang Lang can, perhaps not as fast and effortlessly as he. But pianistic prowess must not be judged by the stopwatch! However hard he distances himself from his earlier popstar image, he remains the exploited figurehead of a giant PR machine, now financed by Sony.
Some eighty years ago I heard Horowitz - one cannot say 'at the height of his powers' because he was always at that level. His phenomenal, almost acrobatic virtuosity, was totally placed in the service of interpretations that melted the heart and the intellect. His legendary encores were as if a grandseigneur threw pearls and diamonds to his admirers, always with his characteristic wry but knowing little smirk. No arms flailing heavenwards. Lang Lang is still far away from that class.
It is involuntarily ironic, that only next week, the Chinese State Circus, by purely accidental programme-planning, will perform in the Festspielhaus. It would be totally underserved and unfair to make some malicius comment of Lang Lang's performance being used as a PR trailer to the stupenduous ones of the Chinese acrobats. His performances to mass audiences, televised to billions of viewers, have done miracles for making classical music for them a possible alternative to the all-pervading pop, rap and heavy metal cacophony.
He deserves admiration and warm sympathy for his performances, even if one strips them of the superficialities he cannot quite abandon. His ability to use the piano as a beloved and cajoled partner, with a touch and colour that can range between hardly ever heard nuances between almost total silky silence to a truly majestic percussive power, his great talent to mould phrases lovingly, even if perhaps he fails sometimes to resist the temptation to revel in the swooning delight of the moment, and his constant effort to learn from his peers, deserve respectful praise.
His recording of Beethoven's 1st and 4th Piano Concertos shows the shaping and restraining hand of Christopher Eschenbach, a stern and unforgiving taskmaster. One forgives him everything, because he behaves well and modestly, owned up to his terribly abused and exploited childhood and does a most honourable and indefatiguable job inspiring millions of children to learning piano and classical music and promoting, even financially, the cause of classical music education and humanitarian efforts. The world's biggest piano factory in China cannot keep up with the demand for hundreds of thousands of pianos. Steinway launched a version for students named after him.
It is almost unfair of me to draw attention to a recital to be given on the 19th March in the Festspielhaus by Krystian Zimerman, one of the grand seigneurs of piano playing, whose rare appearances will be a perhaps necessary object lesson in what to admire and cherish in interpretation that at its level matches the genius of the composers.
Photos: Andrea Kremper
Related articles:
Review of Lang Lang at the Royal Festival Hall, November 2007
Review of Lang Lang's new recording of Chopin concertos
Hélène Grimaud plays Beethoven at the Edinburgh Festival 2008
Chamber Orchestra of Europe with Andras Shiff in Dublin, 2008
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