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The biggest star in the classical music firmament these days is – of course -- the 27-year-old Chinese-born pianist Lang Lang, whose high-level appearances have sent him jetting musically around the world. He’s in demand everywhere: The Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremonies! The Grammy Awards, the Nobel Prize concert in Stockholm, the Concert for Europe in Vienna, the UNICEF Goodwill Ambassadorship!
It’s no surprise that a Lang Lang appearance at the Seattle Symphony invariably leads to a sellout, and that’s exactly what happened in an all-Beethoven concert featuring the pianist in the Concerto No. 2. It is one of the least-performed of the five Beethoven piano concertos, and it is not exactly famous as a star vehicle (being short on romantic-era fireworks). But in this performance, that concerto positively levitated off the piano and into the delighted ears of Lang Lang’s fans.
The pianist once dubbed “Bang Bang” by a few music-business detractors has more recently demonstrated a considerably wider expressive range than the fortissimo he favored earlier in his career. And while his Beethoven performance here was not short on drama and firepower, it also represented the pianist at his most dulcet. Particularly in the second (Adagio) movement, the melodic line was spun so finely that it sounded like a mere breath of music in some passages. The contrast with the more rambunctious finale was dramatic indeed.
So mighty is this pianist’s technique that even the thorniest passages are tossed off with an ease that suggests they barely got Lang Lang’s full attention. This ease, and the structure of the Concerto No. 2, gave the pianist a bit too much time when his left hand had little to do besides give airy conducting gestures – a mannerism that is getting perhaps a little too mannered.
Every attenuated line of the concerto was accompanied with considerable alacrity by Schwarz and the orchestra, never overpowering the pianist even in the most fade-away passages, and lending the finale a convincing jollity.
With his hair looking a bit less alarmed than in his last appearance here, Lang Lang acknowledged the exuberant standing ovation in his own distinctive style. Not since the glory days of diva Leontyne Price has a performer raised the acceptance of applause to quite such an art form – recognizing, for example, every section of the house with special gestures. Finally, conductor Gerard Schwarz urged Lang Lang back to the piano, where he gave his ecstatic fans an encore: a silky, stylish solo performance of Chopin’s familiar Etude in A-Flat Major (Op. 25, No. 1).
The opener, Beethoven’s “Coriolan” Overture, got a competent but unexciting performance. The final work, Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony (No. 6), seemed the perfect piece to accompany the beautiful autumn day outside, though the performance was not evenly inspired. There were effective wind solos and out-of-tune brass ones; lots of theater in the depiction of a storm and its aftermath, and a lovely ease in the songlike last movement, so evocative of the sense that “All’s right with the world.”
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