These performances, when they aren’t truly boring, are just bad. Take the opening of the Second Concerto: it should be played in tempo, and evenly, evoking the steady tolling of bells. That is what Rachmaninov wrote, and given some natural leeway for interpretive license, that’s what virtually all pianists do. Does Lang Lang understand this? He’s twice as slow as the ensuing allegro (at least), hits the fortissimo too early, can’t seem to make up his mind how long each note should last, and as for the ritard before the entrance of the orchestra, well, forget it. When the violins come in with the principal theme, he pounds away at the keyboard like Wagner’s Nibelheim anvils, seemingly unaware of the fact that his part is (as so often in this concerto) mere accompaniment. Of course he couldn’t get out of the way if he wanted too. DG’s garish and ugly engineering has ensured that. At the end of the first and last movements he’s miked louder than the entire orchestra, and rapid passages come replete with the steady clicking of his fingernails on the keyboard (in the left channel, if you care).
That opening is, alas, a portent of dreadful things to come. The first movement recapitulation has seldom sounded so heavy and lacking in thrust, and Gergiev certainly doesn’t help, getting into the act with plenty of mannered ritards and strange underlinings of his own. The adagio might have been attractive, had it not been for excruciating playing from the orchestra’s flute and clarinet soloists, but the finale is all but unendurable. Not only is it possibly the slowest on disc, the “big tune” has seldom been phrased so flatly, with so little sense of rapture, while the central fugato is a mess, the balances between soloist and orchestra positively inimical to the sense of the music. With an overall duration of more than 36 minutes in a work usually considerably fleeter, comparison with Richter (also on DG) is instructive. He’s also quite deliberate (though not to this degree), particularly in the first movement, but the proportions are invariably correct, the long line preserved, and he knows when to take the spotlight and when to yield to his colleagues. In short, Lang Lang’s performance is a disaster.
The Paganini Rhapsody fares no better. There seems to be no guiding intelligence at work here at all, and I don’t mean that Lang Lang is not intelligent or talented. I refuse to believe that his career is entirely a media creation, as some have claimed, and I was impressed by much of his Carnegie Hall debut concert. His Rachmaninov Third Concerto (on Telarc) was decent. He just doesn’t reveal any of his more positive qualities on this outing. Let me explain with some concrete examples: The first four variations are all in the same tempo, Allegro vivace. So are variations eight and nine. They don’t sound it, at least as compared to Variation 13. This brings back the opening theme almost literally, and it’s marked simply Allegro, but here it’s noticably livelier than the original Tempo 1, which is exactly what Rachmaninov does not want, because he plans to leave room to speed up even further for the Scherzando variation fifteen (whose Più vivo directive Lang Lang largely ignores).
What this lack of long-term structural planning reveals is an interpretation either tedious and insufficiently contrasted, as in much of the work’s first half, or fragmented and disorganized thereafter. Lang Lang and Gergiev turn the piece into a series of disconnected vignettes, with little sense of continuity and no sustained tension. Listen to how flatly the first appearance of the Dies Irae tune comes across in variation seven, or to the interminable crawl–complete with a loud, theatrical gasp–through the Moderato of variation eleven. Then there’s the positively awful moment in the Tempo di menuetto variation twelve where the piano and clarinet stop the music dead in its tracks. Ultimately Lang Lang’s mannerisms, the frequent ritards and phrase distensions, become boringly predictable, a parody of “Golden Age” Romantic expressiveness. Even the timing between some of the variations seems slightly off, perhaps the result of poor editing.
As suggested above, Gergiev and his orchestra, not the best of bands on a good day, sound far from comfortable here. Aside from the terrible woodwind soloists and iffy sectional balances (never mind the absurdly dominant piano), the strings sound both undernourished and scruffy (try variation fourteen, or the famous eighteenth, and you’ll hear what I mean immediately). I’ve seldom heard the orchestral component played so casually by a Russian orchestra, or conducted with so little passion. Add to this the bad sonics, and an embarrassing booklet photo spread of Lang Lang–rolling around on the beach in a metallic blue jacket–that would have made Liberace blush, and the result is very hard to take seriously. I hesitate to use the inherently subjective term “tasteless,” but if it has any meaning at all, then this release could serve as a textbook definition.
Clearly Lang Lang, for all his technical facility, is not ready to commit these pieces to disc, nor quite frankly should DG be encouraging him to do so much so quickly if this is typical of what we can expect in future. Whether the cause is immaturity or poor judgment occasioned by a lack of access to constructive criticism, the result here is unacceptable. Part of the blame must also rest squarely with producer Martin Engstroem. It is simply inconceivable that a Max Wilcox, or a Walter Legge, or one of the discerning recording professionals of decades past would permit performances of such poor quality to be released on a major label. I wonder if there is anyone out there today with the guts and artistic integrity to simply say “No, this isn’t good enough. We are dropping the project here and now.” The cheesy production values, lousy sound, and spasmodic artistry on offer here are unworthy both of DG and the performers, and that’s the bottom line.
