CROWD-PLEASER LANG LANG BRINGS DOWN THE HOUSE
                   Plus Romantic Reveries à la Liszt 
                                              By Paul Hertelendy 
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Week of Jan. 19-26, 2011
                                                                  Vol. 13, No. 54
            Lang Lang, one of the few solo artists who can still sell out a symphony hall recital, brought his high technique, singing tone and romantic excesses to Davies Hall Jan. 18 in an impressive but less than consistent run through Beethoven, Prokofiev and Albéniz.
            The 28-year-old pianist from the steel-belt center of Shenyang, China, has become a genuine superstar of the classical universe, branching out in so many directions that we may never again see him spend a week here playing a concerto. He does educational stints, chamber music, Herbie Hancock collaborations, recordings, film scores, Olympic showcases, and of course the one-nighters hopscotching all around the world.
            The high point of the San Francisco piano recital was Beethoven’s “Appassionata,” played with fidelity to the beloved score and a definite panache. His fast runs were letter-perfect, his pianissimos celestial, and his finale incendiary. Particularly effective was the variations theme of the Andante, where the interpreter must make music out of immobile repetitive chords, much as in the slow movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.
            This followed the alluring transparency of Beethoven’s Sonata Op. 2, No. 3, with equal attention to dancing figures and subtle dynamic shading. Lang Lang’s light pedaling was especially idiomatic. But here surfaced Lang Lang’s Achilles heel, his penchant for shamelessly slowing down and romanticizing slow movements until you thought that Franz Liszt himself was back in town making faint ladies swoon while at the Steinway.
            That same weakness beset damaged the first three selections of  Albéniz’s “Iberia” collection, where we no longer heard crisp Spanish dances, but rather Lang Lang’s taffy-pull of tempos dangerously close to romantic noodling. And once again in the Andante of the Prokofiev Sonata No. 7 (1942), there is a ponderous dream world, much closer to Lang Lang’s orbit than to Prokofiev’s.
            Pity, because this is one of the grand and meaty 20th-century display sonatas, starting like a troika-drawn sledge speeding over the Siberian snows, and ending in a blizzard of flying notes. He handled those blizzards like a master, reaping a standing ovation leading to two encores: Rachmaninoff’s Prelude, Op. 23, No. 4, and Chopin’s Prelude in G-flat major, Opus 10, no.5 ("Black Keys:" the very one that LL demonstrates in his video, using a rolling orange in place of the fast-flying right-hand part, "playing" near perfectly!!).  

            Lang Lang, piano recital, presented by San Francisco Symphony.  For further SFS info: (415) 864-6000, or go  online.
        ©Paul Hertelendy 2011
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           Paul Hertelendy has been covering the dance and modern-music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area with relish -- and a certain amount of salsa -- for years.
    These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never weakly) will focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with forays into books (by authors of the region), theater and recordings by local artists as well.
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