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Lang Lang at the Mann
Tom Purdom
East meets West, Episode 1:
Lang Lang the pianist, or the actor?
TOM PURDOM
Is Lang Lang a musical version of a method actor?
The celebrated Chinese-born, Curtis-trained piano prodigy has become a controversial figure because he hurls himself all over the keyboard and wows his audience with other showy flamboyant gestures. To his admirers, this means he really throws himself into his interpretations. To others— including me— it raises the suspicion that his histrionics are a substitute for the passion he should communicate through his piano.
Lang Lang’s theatrics may be tolerable when he applies them to Beethoven and the 19th Century romantics. But I approached his recent appearance at the Mann wondering how they’d work when he played Mozart. As it turned out, he adopted an entirely different demeanor when he played Mozart’s 17th Piano Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra. For Mozart, Lang Lang mostly limited himself to swaying with a small amount of shoulder action. He looked, in fact, like an actor playing Mozart.
Imagining he's the composer
Is it possible that Lang Lang works himself into the overall mood of a piece by imagining he’s the composer? Is that what all that body language stems from? If so, the music coming out of the soundboard justified the technique. Lang Lang looked as if he was driving a wondrous carriage during the last movement presto, and you could hear that in the music, too.
The Orchestra was led by the Chinese conductor Long Yu, and it sounded especially beautiful in the long orchestral introductions that opened the movements— an achievement for which the conductor always deserves the lion’s share of the credit.
The Orchestra billed the concert as an “East Meets West” program. Lang Lang is Chinese-born; the guest conductor founded the China Philharmonic; and the second half was devoted to two modern Chinese works.
A musical tour of rural China
China Air Suite is a trio of traditional melodies arranged for modern orchestra by three different composers. The result is a piece reminiscent of Vaughan Williams in his pastoral, country-life mood. The first movement, Flowing Stream, carries you across the hills and dales. Going to the West Gate takes us to a country marketplace, and Dialogue of the Flowers finishes the tour with the bustle of a rural festival. The melodies may be Chinese, but the unique qualities of the Western orchestra underscore the universality of the romantic, somewhat wistful attitude the subject evokes.
The Yellow River Concerto is a piece with a history. In 1939, a Chinese composer, Xian Xinghai, wrote an eight-movement Yellow River Cantata to rally resistance to the Japanese invasion. The cantata was banned during the Mao’s Cultural Revolution in the ’60s, but the Chinese pianist Yin Chengzong and several other members of the China Philharmonic produced a piano and orchestra version anyway. They slipped the new version past the censors partly by adding a finale that included quotes from two Communist anthems, The East is Red and The Internationale.
Naïve, schmaltzy— and a big hit in China
The concerto is a big hit in China, but Western critics have dismissed it with epithets like “naïve” and “schmaltzy.” The concerto wasn’t composed for a documentary but you can see the visuals that would accompany it if it were used that way. If it were an American documentary, the second movement, Ode to the Yellow River, would provide the mood music as the camera panned over the plains and canyons of the American West. In the third movement, The Yellow River in Anger, the opening flute passage would accompany the ominous tranquility that precedes the acceleration of the floodwaters.
The truth is, however, that none of the criticisms really matters. The Yellow River Concerto happens to be a great piece to listen to. It’s beautifully orchestrated, and it’s constructed around some great melodies. The climax may quote Commie marching songs, but who cares? It’s a rouser— and it would be a rouser even if you didn’t know what the music was.
Yellow River is that rare item: a successful piece of democratic art. It was produced by a committee (of all things) and it deliberately appeals to the broadest possible taste. Yet, in spite of that, it’s also tasteful and musically imaginative, and fully deserved the ovation it received from the Mann audience.
To read a response, click here.
Lang Lang the pianist, or the actor?
TOM PURDOM
Is Lang Lang a musical version of a method actor?
The celebrated Chinese-born, Curtis-trained piano prodigy has become a controversial figure because he hurls himself all over the keyboard and wows his audience with other showy flamboyant gestures. To his admirers, this means he really throws himself into his interpretations. To others— including me— it raises the suspicion that his histrionics are a substitute for the passion he should communicate through his piano.
Lang Lang’s theatrics may be tolerable when he applies them to Beethoven and the 19th Century romantics. But I approached his recent appearance at the Mann wondering how they’d work when he played Mozart. As it turned out, he adopted an entirely different demeanor when he played Mozart’s 17th Piano Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra. For Mozart, Lang Lang mostly limited himself to swaying with a small amount of shoulder action. He looked, in fact, like an actor playing Mozart.
Imagining he's the composer
Is it possible that Lang Lang works himself into the overall mood of a piece by imagining he’s the composer? Is that what all that body language stems from? If so, the music coming out of the soundboard justified the technique. Lang Lang looked as if he was driving a wondrous carriage during the last movement presto, and you could hear that in the music, too.
The Orchestra was led by the Chinese conductor Long Yu, and it sounded especially beautiful in the long orchestral introductions that opened the movements— an achievement for which the conductor always deserves the lion’s share of the credit.
The Orchestra billed the concert as an “East Meets West” program. Lang Lang is Chinese-born; the guest conductor founded the China Philharmonic; and the second half was devoted to two modern Chinese works.
A musical tour of rural China
China Air Suite is a trio of traditional melodies arranged for modern orchestra by three different composers. The result is a piece reminiscent of Vaughan Williams in his pastoral, country-life mood. The first movement, Flowing Stream, carries you across the hills and dales. Going to the West Gate takes us to a country marketplace, and Dialogue of the Flowers finishes the tour with the bustle of a rural festival. The melodies may be Chinese, but the unique qualities of the Western orchestra underscore the universality of the romantic, somewhat wistful attitude the subject evokes.
The Yellow River Concerto is a piece with a history. In 1939, a Chinese composer, Xian Xinghai, wrote an eight-movement Yellow River Cantata to rally resistance to the Japanese invasion. The cantata was banned during the Mao’s Cultural Revolution in the ’60s, but the Chinese pianist Yin Chengzong and several other members of the China Philharmonic produced a piano and orchestra version anyway. They slipped the new version past the censors partly by adding a finale that included quotes from two Communist anthems, The East is Red and The Internationale.
Naïve, schmaltzy— and a big hit in China
The concerto is a big hit in China, but Western critics have dismissed it with epithets like “naïve” and “schmaltzy.” The concerto wasn’t composed for a documentary but you can see the visuals that would accompany it if it were used that way. If it were an American documentary, the second movement, Ode to the Yellow River, would provide the mood music as the camera panned over the plains and canyons of the American West. In the third movement, The Yellow River in Anger, the opening flute passage would accompany the ominous tranquility that precedes the acceleration of the floodwaters.
The truth is, however, that none of the criticisms really matters. The Yellow River Concerto happens to be a great piece to listen to. It’s beautifully orchestrated, and it’s constructed around some great melodies. The climax may quote Commie marching songs, but who cares? It’s a rouser— and it would be a rouser even if you didn’t know what the music was.
Yellow River is that rare item: a successful piece of democratic art. It was produced by a committee (of all things) and it deliberately appeals to the broadest possible taste. Yet, in spite of that, it’s also tasteful and musically imaginative, and fully deserved the ovation it received from the Mann audience.
To read a response, click here.
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