Lang Lang a sensation

Classical Music

Tom Aldridge

Lang Lang performed to packed houses last weekend.

ISO Classical Series Program No. 19
Hilbert Circle Theatre
May 11-13

I’ve read so much about Lang Lang in recent years: his prodigal pianistic talents, his worldwide wunderkind fame, his tendency to showmanship. This native of Shenyang, China, finally made it here last weekend, to show Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra audiences (with the Circle Theatre packed each day) whether the talent matched the hype.

With an attractive program seeing the return of ISO music director Mario Venzago after a two-month absence, Lang Lang greatly impressed — mostly. His choice of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 17 in G, K. 453, replacing his originally scheduled Chopin Concerto No. 2, showed a surprising maturity for a 23-year-old fęted virtuoso.

While the Chopin is piano-dominant, with a flashy keyboard display and the orchestra only riding in the back seat, K. 453 is a beautifully integrated work. Its prominent use of winds — comprising only 1 flute, two oboes, two bassoons and two horns — highlights a perfect blend of colors, for which Lang Lang isn’t always at center stage. And its slow movement, perhaps the most profoundly sublime one in Mozart’s entire piano-concerto pantheon, joins that select handful of the composer’s creations that reach above the stratosphere.

Taking all three movements at a brisk pace, Venzago and Lang Lang seemed almost as well integrated as the work they were playing: crisp, incisive, precise attacks nicely shaped and phrased. Not once did Lang Lang stray from the printed score in any way other than to inflect it with a musical cognizance astonishing for his age. He used Mozart’s own supplied cadenzas. Moreover, his passage and scale work delivered a cascade of pearls with minimum pedaling, every note sounding but fitting into Mozart’s larger scheme. Of course, the Andante was the most heartfelt, Lang Lang trading off a bewitching poignancy with the winds, creating mesmerizing musical emanations.

Following the theme-and-variations Finale and a thundering ovation, Lang Lang reverted to an ordinary, youthful virtuoso. He chose for his expected encore (on Friday, at any rate) the second half of Liszt’s 2nd Hungarian Rhapsody — in what I presume to be an especially difficult arrangement. This was pure show-off stuff, which impressed all-the-less because he slipped in a few places, taking a speed even he couldn’t maintain. As Lang Lang matures — and gets these excessive display whims out of his system — he has every chance of becoming one of the world’s great pianists: another — but different — André Watts, for example.

Because of his impressive accounts of the two remaining works: Beethoven’s Overture from his incidental music to Goethe’s Egmont, Op. 84, and César Franck’s Symphony in D Minor (1888), Venzago’s return was equally welcome. Opening with the Egmont, Venzago gave us — after a starkly dramatic introduction featuring prominent oboe and clarinet figures — an impassioned Allegro with the identical “fate” rhythm of Beethoven’s earlier-written Fifth Symphony. Our conductor drove relentlessly through this material with enough dynamic inflection to give it shape. The orchestra responded with a well-honed rendering.

Franck’s only symphony was written at the end of his life. From the lengthy, dramatically portentous opening movement through Roger Roe’s nicely played English horn movement to the victorious Finale, Venzago showed a continuing interpretive trait in retarding the soft sections and speeding up the loud ones. In this case it worked perfectly, making for an exciting, well-executed performance throughout.