All dressed up, but no party pieces
Chinese virtuoso Lang Lang plays it straight - apart from his shoes - while the National Youth Orchestra have fun on the South Bank
Lang Lang/LSO, Barbican, London EC2
NYO/Daniel, Royal Festival Hall, London SE1
Virtuosity has many faces. The great Paganini would often end his recitals with farmyard impressions of pigs, chickens and cows all emanating from his Stradivarius to wild applause. The painter Ingres, an admirer and himself an amateur violinist who had once portrayed his hero, was so dismayed at this waste of genius that he rose weeping from his seat and shouted "A betrayal! The pity of it..."
Today the opposite is more likely. Show an audience a musical celebrity and they crave party pieces. To his credit, Lang Lang - adored by millions and so famous he has a panda named after him - was having none of this for his two concerts with the London Symphony Orchestra, part of his week-long Barbican residency which ends today with a solo recital.
On Monday the Chinese phenomenon played Bartók's Piano Concerto No 2, notable not least for its technical difficulties. I heard the second concert, on Tuesday, which included the UK premiere of Tan Dun's "The Fire" concerto, written specially for him. Lang Lang played it straight, with unshowy dedication which may have baffled his slightly muted but attentive fans.
Conducted by the composer, the piece swerves from floating world artistry - tinkling vibraphones and simple one-line piano melodies - to urgent, rhythmically lurching fortissimos, when the soloist explores the piano's percussive qualities with much banging and martial gesture. These outbursts, coloured by gongs, drums, woodblocks, thundered past like horses galloping round a circuit, the music receding in interest until they came round again. In the interim there was ample time to admire Lang Lang's wondrous shoes.
But this 26-year-old, whose lightly told but often shocking autobiography Journey of a Thousand Miles is out this week, has extraordinary gifts, as a musician and as a showman. His heroes are Mozart, Liszt, Tom and Jerry, Elvis and Tiger Woods, not necessarily in that order. He is over-the-top and ambitious, with more new hairstyles than Victoria Beckham. Classical music needs its megastar entertainers. It's easy to deride, but why not encourage instead?
The LSO concert opened with Tan Dun's Internet Symphony: Eroica, premiered by the YouTube Orchestra in New York earlier this month and more fun to play than to hear, despite two elegiac trumpet solos, performed wistfully by Roderick Franks. The meat of the concert was Mahler's Symphony No 1, conducted by Daniel Harding who took the opening daringly slow, letting rip at the first grand climax. It paid off, with the LSO rising both to the work's challenges, and in the case of eight horns, trombone and trumpet, to their feet for the blazing finale.
A more manageable variety of gilded youth was in evidence at theNational Youth Orchestra's concert at the Festival Hall last weekend, just after the Simón Bolívar Venezuelans had mamboed their way out of town. Did the NYO, in their mid-teens and nearly a decade younger, pick up any of their Latin swagger? Conductor Paul Daniel did his fiery best to inspire them.
This concert was themed around dance and included two contemporary works. George Benjamin's exquisite Dance Figures, in which all sections had solos, was the evening's triumph. But would a grand symphonic masterpiece, burning into the souls of these young players, have worked better than Rachmaninov's patchy Symphonic Dances? For teenagers new to the classical canon, not yet jaded by familiarity, perhaps the old overture, concerto, symphony format, with imaginative variations, still works best.
These talented players were obviously enjoying themselves. Now they need to be tickled into communicating that to an audience. For all performers, it's the hardest lesson. A few more grins would have lifted this fine concert from good to excellent.
articale: guardian.co.uk
I used to read this web site. And I had Langlang's piano concert a couple months ago, it was fun! Reading this article, remind me how important plan to own program.
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