At age 20, Lang Lang surely is 2003’s leading candidate to fill the “next great pianist” hotseat, especially with a Deutsche Grammophon contract in hand and numerous high-profile engagements on his international agenda. My reactions to his previous two releases on Telarc and several live concert performances have been mixed. His Rachmaninov Third Concerto recording, for instance, fused astounding technical feats with intelligent musicality. However, other unabashedly Romantic fare, such as the same composer’s Second Sonata and Balakirev’s Islamey, yielded cautious, underprojected results. Lang Lang’s debut disc for DG shows that he plays both the Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn First concertos with the technical perfection we all take for granted. Is that reason enough to record these warhorses for the umpteenth time? Not in this case, I’m afraid.
Heavy, flow-impeding accents abound in the Tchaikovsky (the first movement’s final pages, the Finale’s main theme), while the celebrated octave passages lack the full-bodied assertion and forward impetus they require. You can say the same thing about Tchaikovsky’s lyrical inspirations, which barely sing under Lang Lang’s introspective fingers. In this context, the pianist’s occasional gestures toward rubato are akin to waking the dead.
The booklet notes mention that the Mendelssohn G minor has been part of Lang Lang’s repertoire since childhood but don’t say how many years he’s been playing it on auto-pilot. As the glittery runs and scintillating filigree effortlessly rain from Lang Lang’s pluperfect hands, I keep wishing for just a smidgen of the dynamism, tonal variety, and impassioned sweep that keep Jean-Yves Thibaudet’s recording at the top of my reference list (with Serkin, Schiff, and Hough close at hand). As for the Tchaikovsky, Universal Classics alone sells more vital, red-blooded, and committed versions from Ashkenazy/Maazel, Arrau/Davis, and three by Martha Argerich. Given Lang Lang’s excellent Haydn and Brahms interpretations on his first Telarc release, I suggest DG next record the pianist in repertoire that genuinely suits him.
