Lang Lang - Lang Lang In Paris: Chopin, Tchaikovsky (2015)

Lang Lang & Chopin have long been a winning combination, with the 2012 release of The Chopin Album being his most successful Sony album to date. Already celebrated worldwide for his Chopin interpretation, Lang Lang selects the four virtuosic and well known “Scherzi” to display his interpretative ability and renowned technical command.

This new release, Lang Lang in Paris, also champions the rarer Tchaikovsky “Seasons”. Tchaikovsky has also featured prominently in Lang Lang’s career - most notably in his international breakthrough at age 17 performing Tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto at Ravinia’s “Gala of the Century” with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Having performed this recital programme all over the world, Lang Lang felt it was the right time for him to record it in Paris – a city he loves & feels at home in.

Reviews: There is a risk of forgetting what a sensational pianist Lang Lang is in the midst of so much marketing and carefully airbrushed photos, but he really is a musician of the most outsize talent. The Chopin Scherzos show, within a minute, that he has not only a transcendent technique, but a musicality which brings everything fully to life. He inhabits every phrase, and what emerges makes such compelling musical sense. For instance the First Scherzo is clearly a stormy piece in any hands, but it really sounds like something previously unheard, the way he sets the agitato bass notes against the right hand which scampers like one of those London Underground mice running for its life, only to bring the whole thing to a halt with three deliberate chords that have such power in their emphasis … it is such a boldly realised effect that it sets a new benchmark in these works. All four are brilliantly projected: the grandeur of No 3 has never been more powerfully realised, yet there is no empty pounding. Dotted rhythms in the texture are not rushed, and give the whole effect a rough-hewn quality, while the chorale tune and its cascading riposte seems like a genuine dialogue, always different in the phrasing as two voices would be. In the Fourth he again gets a leisurely quality in the fantastic second subject that seems to release its yearning as if to the infinite expanse of the night sky, yet it is a human heart which beats behind that gaze. In Tchaikovsky's The Seasons he achieves a wonderful directness of expression, making you think how the composer of these fairly unassuming pieces falls somewhere between Chopin and Schumann, but closer to the latter. This makes the pairing quite well contrasted, and Tchaikovsky's writing doesn't have the galvanising effect of the Chopin of the Scherzos. Nevertheless, in the poignancy of the Barcarolle or Autumn Song, or the rumbustiousness of the late summer months, he again shows an unerring feel for the melody, which just rises time and again and takes the listener with it.

Tracklist:

Disc: 1
1. Scherzo No. 1 in B Minor, Op. 20
2. Scherzo No. 2 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 31
3. Scherzo No.3 in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 39
4. Scherzo No. 4 in E Major, Op. 54

Disc: 2
1. The Seasons, Op. 37a / I. January: At the Fireside
2. The Seasons, Op. 37a / II. February: Carnival
3. The Seasons, Op. 37a / III. March: Song of the Lark
4. The Seasons, Op. 37a / IV. April: Snowdrop
5. The Seasons, Op. 37a / V. May: Starlit Nights
6. The Seasons, Op. 37a / VI. June: Barcarolle
7. The Seasons, Op. 37a / VII. July: Song of the Reaper
8. The Seasons, Op. 37a / VIII. August: Harvest
9. The Seasons, Op. 37a / IX. September: The Hunt
10. The Seasons, Op. 37a / X. October: Autumn Song
11. The Seasons, Op. 37a / XI. November: Troika
12. The Seasons, Op. 37a / XII. December: Christmas