Riding the wave
By David Patric Stearns
Inquirer Music Critic
Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does Philadelphia-based pianist Lang Lang.
Through a truly harmonic convergence, the 21-year-old is on
posters all over record stores, promoting his new CD, and on the
covers of England's two best classical music magazines. He also
has product endorsements that will yield him a Cadillac. For
serious music people, this is the summer of Lang Lang.
There's more: On Tuesday's Live From Lincoln Center on PBS,
fellow guest soloist Stephanie Blythe was in full costume and
makeup, ready to sing, but was stricken with an infection. So,
after playing Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 1 to the usual
rousing audience response, Lang Lang filled the void left by
Blythe with 16 minutes of Liszt's fantasy on themes from Mozart's
Don Giovanni.
The New York audience at the Mostly Mozart Festival couldn't
help erupting in the middle of the Liszt, as if cheering a grand
slam at Yankee Stadium. In light of the subsequent media coverage,
we can be glad WHYY-TV (Channel 12) delayed the telecast until
5 p.m. tomorrow (so as not to upset the loyal viewers of Nova).
Only a few years ago, the China-born graduate of the Curtis
Institute of Music was shoehorned into a one-bedroom apartment
on Spruce Street with his parents and a Steinway grand.
Now, it's eerie how everything goes his way so completely and
relentlessly. As originally planned, the PBS program might have
been a hodgepodge of arias and concertos. As it fell together
- with superb, French-accented playing from the Mostly Mozart
Orchestra under its new music director, Louis Langree - the
concert became strangely perfect, with Lang Lang on the first
half, Beethoven's Symphony No. 4 on the second.
The fact that Lang Lang is also on the August covers of both
Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine is the classical-music equivalent
of Bruce Springsteen's getting the Time and Newsweek covers
simultaneously.
And we all know what this could mean: backlash, when the public
feels an artist is being forced on them.
The classical world mostly seems so enthralled with Lang Lang
at the moment, can this happen to him? It's inevitable, says
a New York publicist who's known for her strategies.
Lang Lang is so hearty, he could probably outmaneuver the
Terminator. Navigating backlash, however, is trickier, given
how all this publicity took on a momentum of its own. Scheduling
Lang Lang, says Live From Lincoln Center producer John Goberman,
"isn't a hard decision. There are plenty of kids who are really
good, but you see this guy play, and it's a few-in-a-lifetime
kind of thing."
The covers of the London-based magazines came together thanks
to both Lang Lang's coming appearance at the popular Prom Concerts
at Royal Albert Hall and Deutsche Grammophon's rush-releasing
his disc of Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn concertos. Yet something
else was afoot.
Lang Lang's previous recordings hadn't inspired great affection
among the BBC editors, so when they asked me to write a short
profile of the pianist, I assumed it would be discreetly tucked
away. Instead, it was splashed across two pages dominated by a
Lang Lang photo, with my words beneath his elbow.
Reviews of the disc have been good to excellent. But talent
guarantees nothing. Already, the Chicago Tribune's usually
even-tempered John von Rhein is expressing impatience with Lang
Lang's extravagant physicality and some of the musical mannerisms
that go with it. Since Lang Lang has played in Chicago more
than any other American city, might this be the start of backlash?
Even though Lang Lang stayed on the right side of overboard in
the PBS telecast, the cameras revealed what may be the real
problem: His movements and facial expressions anticipate -
unintentionally - what he's about to deliver at the keyboard.
In a sense, he's opening your presents before Christmas. This
may never change. I've seen videos of Lang Lang at age 12, and
he was always a mover. Audiences will get used to it - or not.
But will Lang Lang, like so many classical artists, be induced
to stray from his core repertoire into cheesier realms? How
about The Lang Lang Tango Album?
My conversations with him suggest that his interest in pop music
doesn't extend beyond Chinese folk songs and maybe the soundtrack
from one of his favorite films, Gladiator. He seems to actively
dislike most of the rest. That, alone, should keep Lang Lang
out of the Liberace Zone. His plans for European debuts involve
serious repertoire only, such as Mozart and Beethoven.
Though I've found the oft-made comparisons between Lang Lang and
golf champ Tiger Woods to be bogus, the key to their longevity
is the same: Woods needs to keep his head down and eye on the
ball - literally. And Lang Lang needs to do the same - figuratively.
Vivien Leong <[log in to unmask]>
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