Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Can't Get Enough Lang Lang, You Say????

Then check out this video of him playing the famous D-flat Nocturne of Chopin. (Warning: AOL just has to get their few bucks worth of advertising in so bear w/ an idiotic 30-sec spot before the actual video)

Lang Lang\'s Chopin

Then compare w/ a relatively unknown Brit's video performance (choose selection #2):

Sam Haywood\'s Chopin

Any opinions as to who does the more credible job?

Lang Lang actually plays that one really well, IMO.


(by the way, what "idiotic 30-sec spot before the actual video" are you referring to? I just clicked on the link, and the video started playing. )

Haywood is really good, too. Actually, I think I much prefer Haywood's performance to Lang Lang's. It's lighter, and softer, and more "romantic."

But Lang Lang also plays it quite well.

Hmmm....count on me to be unlucky enough to have to sit through 30 seconds of an inane shampoo commercial where some dizzy blonde throws her hair around in slow motion to some cheesey bubblegum rock rot! But glad you liked the serious stuff, Sam!

Haywood ^^

Well, I like them both, actually, probably because they each give me something to go back to the piano with for my own interpretation of this Nocturne. There are some exquisite pianissimo's in Lang Lang's performance which is more "mannered," but I wonder if I'm picking that up from the visual rather than solely from the music.

I can't find much to fault with Haywood's performance, and I prefer his tempo. I also like his physical stillness at the keyboard. Lang Lang's tempo is a little slow for my taste, but, by the same token, he does manage to keep it moving at that tempo - which is no small accomplishment.

Did you notice how many times Lang Lang's right wrist drops well below keyboard level? Interesting.

Thanks for sharing these, Joey.

Regards,

I'm no expert, but from a first listen and taking quality of sound into consideration I liked Lang Lang better.
As to interpretation I would have to re-listen to give an opinion on it...but then that's another 12 minutes.
I hear so much about Lang Lang and I think that was my first time seeing him. I can imagine him playing an upbeat piece and really showing those famous facial expressions people talk about.
However I liked his performance on this piece.

Peter

MY pleasure, Bruce. And thanks for the excellent critique! You too, (or is it "two"), Peter & Sam! (hehe)

I think Langs sweet spot is with Chopin.

Hey guys, I actually did that recording and video for Sam Haywood. He's a really excellent pianist and is great to work with. I have a load more footage somewhere, some Rach stuff I think and also loads of audio recordings of his over the years. The sound quality on the video was seriously degraded when I encoded it to windows media format. I had the choice to make both the video and sound better by reducing the compression, but I felt the file size was becoming such that the casual looker at the site would not tolerate the download time so I had to compromise. That said it's ok-ish and serves it's purpose. I could probably rustle up a better quality one for anyone who is really interested though.

Also if you're interested the "Witch Doll" recording on his site was done last year on a Steinway Model C using a pair of Coles 4040 ribbon mics. I'm only partially satisfied with the sound, I had a very hard time with mic positioning for some reason, and couldn't get the sound I wanted. Anyway Sam's playing always makes my mediocre job sound better.

Competing with LangLang on the gensui level

A rec by LangLang I actually like? What's the world coming to

Is Sam Haywood using the sustain pedal? His right foot seems almost still throughout the piece, Though in a few places it seems as if he is using his left foot.

Diarmuid2, I don't know about the others but I would DEFINITELY be interested in seeing that other video footage of Mr. Haywood. And while you're at it if you by chance happened to shoot anything of Valentina Igoshina, who I understand also resides in London, I would also definitely be interested in seeing that!!!!!!

No luck with the Valentina Igoshina I'm afraid Joe But I'll see what I can find of Sam's stuff.

Hakki Sam is definitely using the pedal (I have a higher res version here) but his pedal movements are subtle.

If I knew what that meant I could potentially say something witty.

Joe I'll have to work on the video, I seem to have deleted the .avi file because it was about 12gb so Adobe Premiere can't find it to encode a new wm file. Give me a day or two. Here's a bit of the 4th Ballade though (different venue than the video clips), live on a knackered model D (hammers are sooo bright). Hakki he's definitely using the pedal here as you can hear the entire mechanism as the piano is so out of condition!

http://www.diarmuid.plus.com/Chopin.mp3

Another clip from the ribbon mic session, crossed Coles 4040s on a Steinway C (no reverb or processing of any kind on this clip).

http://www.diarmuid.plus.com/Pol.mp3

Edit:

I did some hunting, here is a clip from a Scherzo where I cocked up the sound encoding (a few hours before I got to grips with the 48kh video thing).

http://www.diarmuid.plus.com/Scherzowm.wmv

...and a tiny fragment of Rachmaninoff with a better quality .wmv file

http://www.diarmuid.plus.com/Rach_Clip.wmv

Hey, Diarmuid, believe or not, it was YOUR video I enjoyed the most. You're d*mn good! Not to say that Haywood's weren't good but they were too short. If you have the complete b-min. Scherzo I'm sure others here would love to see it, provided there are no copyright restrictions ( but we won't tell, in either case ) BTW, how did you get the gig to videeotape Haywood's recital? Are you a pro? Will you be doing other British pianists in the future?

You should post some more videos of your playing!

Thanks for the link.

Sensitive phrasing, extraordinary dynamic contrast in a delicate piece, most admirable pianissimmo control, beautiful shaping of the piece as a whole. All in all, a superb rendition.

Great piano, great recording. The only bone I'd pick is that little bit of funny whiney sound that squeeked out of the piano as he released the sustain pedal just before the final cadence at the end, that's it.

If you have more links to Lang Lang's performances like this, please share, for indeed I cannot get enough of Lang Lang when he plays that well.

(OK, I also find all that head shaking and ceiling staring rather annoying... but the music was still great, can't take that away from him.)