Carnegie Hall, New York; November 7, 2003
A barrage of microphones dangling in the air and the presence of at least three state-of-the-art video cameras indicated that pianist Lang Lang’s recital debut at Carnegie Hall was to be as much a media event as a concert. As it happens, the 21-year-old pianist handles the limelight with gracious ease. When he walks onstage, he takes his time acknowledging the audience’s applause, and doesn’t ignore the less-well-heeled folks in the balcony. He takes his time before launching into each selection, sometimes placing his hands above the keyboard as if he was preparing for a session of Tai Chi exercises. A few seasons back Lang Lang flailed his head and arms to and fro like a piano-playing marionette. He’s now toned down his body language to the point where one can infer the organic connection of his circular arm movements to the music. He is at his best when he channels his considerable and effortless virtuosity towards the music at hand, as in the opening selection, Schumann’s Abegg Variations. Using the pedal sparingly, Lang Lang’s scintillating fingerwork unraveled the daunting right-hand filigree with uncommon clarity and point. The pianist had trouble settling on a comfortable basic tempo for the first movement of Haydn’s C major sonata (Hob.XVI:50), and eschewed the important exposition repeat. If his fast pace for the finale didn’t quite allow the effect of Haydn’s quirky harmonic surprises to register, the slow movement was eloquent and beautifully sung out. Lang Lang capped the recital’s first half with a superb rendition of Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy. The outer movements were marvels of technical clarity and unswerving (yet never machine-like) rhythmical drive, and no matter how softly he projected the central variations’ delicate features and brooding arcs, they always sounded luminous and full-bodied.
Lang Lang changed from formal concert tails into a traditional red Chinese shirt for the second half. He began with the New York premiere of one of Tan Dun’s earliest works, the multi-movement suite Eight Memories in Watercolor Op. 1. The music’s pentatonic syntax yields little memorable musical substance, although its effective, impressionistic keyboard deployment brought the pianist’s gifts for tone color and nuance to the fore. The pastel-like hues and whispers that worked well in Tan Dun’s piece, however, made a relatively pallid and watery impression in Chopin’s D-flat Nocturne, which lacked the inner drama and vocally-oriented phrasing the music requires. For all the astounding technical feats Lang Lang displayed in Liszt’s Réminiscences de Don Juan (hair-raising octaves, suave and silky double notes), it was hard not to focus on the musical chinks in his armor.
For example, his fidgety rubato and self-conscious voicings in the central La ci darem la mano variations threw the shape of the original vocal lines askew as they wandered in and out of perspective with the accompaniment. By contrast, the long introduction needed more breadth and majesty than Lang Lang’s relatively hard-nosed, somewhat impatient playing suggested. The pianist responded to his audience’s standing ovation with encores: first, a slow and studied Schumann Traumerei, second, a catchy and captivating duet featuring his father Guo-ren Lang playing a traditional Chinese bowed instrument, third, a fire-eating, finger-busting Strauss Fledermaus concoction, and fourth, one of the most heartfelt, unhackneyed, ravishingly detailed, and moving performances of Liszt’s Liebestraume No. 3 in memory.
Then Lang Lang came out again and proceeded to wreck the rapturous mood he created. He launched into a version of Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever that sounded like a more garish yet not totally accurate recreation of Vladimir Horowitz’s transcription, replete with bass register bombs and tasteless glissandos. He nearly doubled the tempo when the famous tune repeated, pounded away in the most vulgar, audience-baiting fashion imaginable: a cheap ending to an evening full of riches.
Jed Distler
