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Rating: LANG LANG: the sounds of water.
ROME'S PARCO DELLA MUSICA JANUARY 25
There's a moment in everyone's life that can fall into the category of "Indefinite Indeterminacy," the state of mind of someone feeling the loss of references that have become important and perceiving that people close to them have changed perspective inexplicably, without reason, even contradicting their own words or, perhaps, their emotions. The indefinite state of mind of someone struggling to understand others' positions, friends, in relation to themselves but also their own in relation to others; an Indeterminate that doesn't set the conditions for any type of "listening," much less that of music; the willingness to let oneself be pervaded and even disrupted by what is heard is strongly limited and hindered.
Or maybe it's not like that. Perhaps the charisma and presence, the originality of a true musician, though young, can.
Lang is a pianist who fascinated me at his debut with his "enchanting" abilities, a bit like the fabled "Pied Piper of Hamelin," the flexibility and ductility of a body capable of playing WITH the music, set in vibration by it and able to respond with graceful and harmonious movements. However, musically he left me quite perplexed, as I always perceived something excessively showy, annoyingly theatrical, sometimes even lacking depth both in the sound and in the approach to the pieces. Last year, I listened to the CD with Beethoven's 4th Concerto and I sensed growth, maturation.
Closed within myself, to Listening, to the OTHER, I nonetheless "dragged" myself to the Parco della Musica and it was a concert full of how Lang is in everyday life: vitality, energy, enthusiasm, recklessness, and that touch of spectacle that perhaps doesn't hurt.
Perhaps a slightly long program, with a very demanding first part, Mozart's sonata KV333 and Schumann's fantasy op.17 followed by a shorter second part with traditional Chinese pieces, now a distinctive element of this young pianist's programs, Wagner's Death of Isolde transcribed by Liszt, and, to close, the 6th Hungarian Rhapsody as a triumph of a truly Lisztian virtuosity, one that, before simply being exhibited, is understood and internalized, aimed not, or not only, at exciting the public, but at shaping the surrounding sound space by giving it a new, imaginative and fantastic form, filling it with his own sound, his own timbre. Lang's has all the colors and even the sounds of water: crystal-clear and pure, opalescent and adamantine in the execution of the most beautiful Mozart I have heard in recent years; sparkling, lively, playful, operatic, and clownish yet at the same time thoughtful, an eternally restless adolescent. A treacherous sonata where the Mozartian cantability dresses fluid and simple writing but hides complex architectures born of a deliberate and ironic formal contamination, difficult to render with the naturalness of "speaking softly"; yet this sonata truly slipped over the listeners like a mountain waterfall.
And the sound became glassy, then dark for the Fantasia op.17, the alternative and, at the same time, the true "sonata form" of an experimental Schumann. A versatile melody, in continuous metamorphosis, allowing the themes to recall and chase each other, passing through and dissolving into one another. If I think about Lang's interpretation now, unemotionally, rationally, I know that what clashed with the perceptive idea I have of Schumann and the Fantasia in particular was the lack of continuity in the "Everything related to everything" sense in favor of an execution almost sketch-like and fragmented, perhaps more suited to "Carnaval" or "Kinderszenen"; as in the breaks of time, in the realization of the rhythmic figures a more "heroic" than "solemn" vision, certainly at some points, too "ironic." It is a Schumann that now seems to me deprived of "torment and inner search." Yet, despite these stylistically not entirely agreeable choices, Lang managed to impose himself on my gloomy state of mind and be "Listened to," followed step by step, note by note, in his Schumannian journey. In the end, his interpretation seemed "full" and rich anyway, probably because it was played and lived in the first person with fullness and participation.
The concert was over for me.
Indeed the second part with the traditional Chinese pieces might have pleased some of my neighbors who mistook the Dream of Love (by Liszt) that Lang offered as the only encore, for an improbable Schubert or Schumann. Instead, the ethereal, then distant and singsong sound of the pouring rain was replaced by that of the whirlpools of a mass of water for Liszt. A splendid interpretation of an equally splendid transcription of Wagner's "The Death of Isolde," in which the mastery in creating effects, varying the touch, merged with a depth of accents never before heard in Lang, despite his now very vast repertoire. The finale that rips applause, the Rhapsody, also now a "must." Many pianists of the new generation have chosen some to present in a "difficult" version. Volodos the 12th, Lang the 2nd and the 6th. Many consider theirs a "vain" attempt to follow in Horowitz’s footsteps, but in Horowitz no sounds, no colors of water.
Horowitz, by now, has been far surpassed.
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