PIANO BOOK
LANG LANG, Piano
Deutsche Grammophon 479 8109 1 / ***
In his latest album, Chinese piano phenom Lang Lang has gone back to basics, playing pieces he learnt as a child. There are some no-brainers which open this 72 minute anthology, such as J.S.Bach’s Prelude in C major from Book One of The Well-Tempered Clavier and Beethoven’s immortal Für Elise. He plays these easy pieces with simplicity and finesse.
However in the very familiar 1st movement of Mozart’s Sonata Facile in C major (K.545), he attempts some ornamentations which get annoying on repeated listening. Debussy’s Clair de lune comes across as being just too slow, while Tekla Bardazewska-Baranowska’s The Maiden’s Prayer sounds banal whoever is playing. Surely, Mozart’s Variations on Ah, vous dirai-je Maman (Twinkle Twinkle Little Star) is beyond the technique of piano beginners, as is Mendelssohn’s Spinning Song and Debussy’s Gradus Ad Parnassum (Children’s Corner Suite).
Surely he would not have known of pieces by Max Richter, Yann Tiersen or Ryuichi Sakamoto growing up in Shenyang, but the Japanese film composer’s Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence receives a grandstanding rendition.
The Super Deluxe edition of this album runs onto two discs and includes a handsome hardcover book of scores and personal insights, with some 29 pieces in all. This is not a terrible album, but one cannot help feel it could have been much better.
No comments:
Post a Comment