Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Lang Lang--Hurrah!

Good for you. Like whatever you want. His playing of Don Juan, the Mendelssohn G minor, and 1 or 2 other pieces isn't bad. It doesn't make up for some of the over the top, and awful playing he does elsewhere.
All in all, when he's at his best, he's not pretty good - not great. When he's bad, he's pretty awful. Still waiting for him to become an artist. Hasn't happened.

Strip down the ceiling gazing, funny faces, and other goofiness, and I just don't see what people rave about.

What I find most offensive in all this Lang Lang bashing is the attitude that if you like his playing you must be unschooled, unwashed, deficient, or somehow lacking in good taste. You guys need to get off your high horses before you suffer nosebleed. And I'm not even a big fan of LL.

He raped the appassionata (cries)

One of the things I notice about Lang Lang's playing is he makes the individual notes stand out--even when playing fast. I really like that. Is this called good "articulation" by pianists? I forget which piece but there's one he plays and the piano sound may be the best I've ever heard.

Being new to classical pianists I can see where I lack experience in judging pianists and yet I know that highly experienced listeners and players vary much in their choice of pianist.

I expect people's ability to hear music well--"an ear for music"--varies considerably, even with accomplished pianists.

Who was it--Isaac Stern?--who said: "Make the instrument sing."

Bech

Certain posts notwithstanding, this is a much more reasonable discussion of Mr. Lang than I've previously experienced here.



This is my opinion too. (As I've posted here before,) I heard him play Schubert's late A major sonata, and it was ravishing and faithful, all 40 minutes. Later in the concert though, he played the Heroic Polonaise like a buffoon, swinging his head from side to side and smiling.

Still, I'm more impressed by fascinating, original playing than I am unimpressed by silly buffoonery, so I take a weighted average of these two impressions.

-J

If their is one thing I can give to Lang Lang is that he's an individual fully capable of giving putting in his own two cents into beaten and battered works. Even if I can't say I like him, and to be honest I rarely like any interpretation I hear of a very standard work, I can fully appreciate him. He's not so far from Paderewski and his antics. Or even some of Horowitz's antics or even Argerich's antics or even Ruben...Well you get the point.

Okay, then try Biss, Sokolov, Perahia, Volodos, Chiu, Tharaud, Denk, Kimura Parker, Montero, Hamelin, Cohen, Hough, Kern, Trpceski, etc...

Then it's to impersonal.

Why do you care how he performs, can you just concentrate on his sound only? Is he good or not. I personally do not care how they make the sound. If they are good, they are good regardless how ugly they are. We need to listen beyond the physcial look of the pianist.

As much as I'd like to say it doesn't matter. It does, it's certainly factored in to Ivo Pogorelich's career.

The same argument, it does not affect Lang Lang career. His mannerism is crazy to put the least. But apparently, he sells well.

I agree. My criticism of his performance of the Polonaise sounded like I was focusing on his gestures (smiling, swinging his head). But my point was that the interpretation itself was trivialized and silly. In this case, the gestures were the outward manifestations of what was going on musically.

-J

Yes, but when the name of Lang Lang comes up what do people first think of. It's not the brilliant singing tone. Most people I believe would think of the mannerisms which is sad. Yes we as human beings pay attention to these things.

Why can't we all just agree to disagree about Lang Lang? These threads are always the same old story over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

Alright, whether we like or dislike him he has a career and he doesn't seem to be going anywhere soon.

I am neutral toward Lang Lang. I heard his recording around 2001 or 2002. I happened at Border book store, and listened those CD machine. I was very impressed with his tone. I did not even know who this young guy was.

His Chopin Nocturne Op. 27 , the Db, I think was extremely good. To date, I think it is the best that I have ever heard.

If you really paid attention, he does all these crazy mannerism since he was a little boy. It is not something he just invented once he became famous. It appears this is the way he performs.

Financial and fame wise, he has reached the peak...nowhere to go....I think most pianists in the world will be happy if they can reach Lang Lang level of success. We cannot deny that he is a successful pianist, whether we like it or not.

Don Juan 2?

LL's Carnegie Hall performance is my favourite Don Juan performance (MAH comes in second) but for some reason he completely skips the Eb-minor Andante section right before the ending octaves. I'm pretty sure both the original score and Busoni's reduction have it in there.

I have an interesting theory about this.

Many of those who dislike Lang Lang are older, and those of us in the 35+ category grew up listening to recordings. There was no such thing as the internet when I was in high school, so we got all of our music on CD.

MTV pretty much changed all that, mostly for popular music. MTV was a HUGE influence on my generation, pairing music with video (it used to be a station that played nothing but music videos - they didn't start doing those stupid reality shows until the mid 90's.)

Nowadays, younger people are more visual and have difficulty connecting with performances that don't have a visual aspect to them. I think this explains some of Lang Lang's popularity and the direction taken by people like the Anderson-Roe Duo and Alexander Tharaud (check out his site for the visual art and video work.)

Plus, most people listen to music on bad computer speakers these days, and recording engineers do a lot of electronic processing to the sound - both of which have an effect on the tone quality of what most people hear. Those with experience listening to live acoustic music usually have a better sense of tone quality, and this is also why it's important for serious pianists to study at music schools with good instruments and good students, and why it's important for student pianists to practice on acoustic instruments. (Digital pianos use very expensive, carefully maintained concert grands as models for their sound. The player of a digital piano doesn't need to work nearly as hard to get a beautiful tone - Yamaha and Roland have already done that for you!)

You've only defined success in terms of money and fame.