From the Tucson Citizen
CD Reviews
Feb. 8, 2001
CLASSICAL
Lang Lang "Lang Lang" (Telarc 80524)
Upon hearing pianist Lang Lang's Tucson debut in September on the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music's "Piano and Friends" series, I was moved to write: "In 21 years of writing about music, only once or twice has an artist so impressed this writer with the authority, personality and musicality of a performance as pianist Lang Lang displayed Sunday." Now upon hearing his first live solo recital disc, I'll take it a step or two further. Lang Lang is the single most complete pianist I have ever heard, bar none. And he's 18 years old! The Chinese-born student of Gary Graffman at the Curtis Institute makes his stupefying debut on a 15-track, nearly 80-minute recital disc recorded live at Tanglewood in Lenox, Mass. The featured works include Haydn's Sonata in E-Major, Hob. XVI:31; Rachmaninoff's Sonata No. 2 in b-flat minor, Op. 36; Brahms Six Pieces, Op. 118; Tchaikovsky's "Dumka (Russian Rustic Scene)" and Nocturne in C-Sharp Major; and Balakirev's "Islamey (Oriental Fantasy." Lang sets the bar early on in the Haydn, lending a cat-and-mouse sense of playfulness to its opening movement, an air of ease amidst the formality in its slow, middle movement and a pristine, cut-glass manner of generating lines of faceted precision in its finale. Without a hint of arrogance, stodgy performance practice notions or over-the-top bravura, Lang serves both score and style to perfection. And already in this early piece, Lang sets what will become the artistic hallmark of the rest of the disc. It is his phrasing and his grasp of the whole that makes the performance so enthralling. Lang breaks up and re-frames phrase sections into mini tableaus, continually refreshing the ear with new ways of hearing the thematic material. Lang redefines the term "touch," rendering the block dynamics of Haydn's score with a level of chiselled precision rarely encountered. And the Haydn is the tip of the iceberg. In the romantic works that follow, one is blown away by the young pianist's complete understanding and detailed realization of every minute facet of each score. Other artists have a kind of sculptural way with the lines of the score, a few among them a more architectural way of envisioning small detail within the broader scope. But Lang seems to approach these scores like a city planner, sculpting every rolling hill, lawn, garden, fountain and sidewalk, along with every building, park bench and person walking through, down to the texture of the hair of passers-by. Here Lang puts his phenomenal technique to the service of every textural nuance and emotional wrinkle of these epic scores. In the opening movement of the Rachmaninoff, for example, he scampers and rocks his way through the opening tempest, transforming the material with elegant elasticity and jazzy steps. He lends its reflective, quiet waltz a cinematic air, authoritatively recasting the theme in time, volume and perspective. Similarly in the second movement one is impressed by the full three dimensionality of his playing, his judicious sense of rubato (elastic phrasing) and rolling traversal of the keys. The Brahms, too, yields an upwelling of Lang's soul. In its second movement - Intermezzo in A Major - Lang initially treats the theme with hymn-like reverence, transforming it into something of a romantic apparition. In its fifth movement - Romanze in F Major - Lang captures the quiet grandeur and lyrical grace of the music, along with the effervescence and drama of its tremolo middle section. And in its final movement - Intermezzo in e-flat minor - Lang is at the pinnacle of his expressive powers, separating high, plaintive melody from the soft, undulating ground as he builds to a dramatic plateau, only to decrescendo with percolating action into playing of barely audible softness. To call it an impressive debut is to sell this disc short. It is, in fact, a landmark.
Grade: A+
AFCM
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