LANG LANG PLAYS DISNEY
The Star Theatre
Saturday (14 June 2025)
This review was published in The Straits Times on 16 June 2025 with the title "Lang Lang and Disney make for crowd-pleasing combination".
Anybody growing up watching Disney’s animated movies will have been enchanted by the catchy songs and melodies. Now imagine a Disney song-book creatively transcribed, sumptuously orchestrated and turned into a multi-movement piano concerto with solos aplenty. Lang Lang Plays Disney with the Orchestra of the Music Makers conducted by Joshua Tan ticked all the boxes.
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| Photo: Yong Junyi |
The Chinese pianist has become such a universal piano icon that any departure from actual classical music would not be considered selling out but rather expanding his repertoire and reach, not to mention bank balance. And he has the charisma to convincingly pull off any music from Bach to Bartok, or from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) to Soul (2024), and pretty much everything in between.
His versatility in various popular musical styles were demonstrated in the solo transcriptions, including We Don’t Talk About Bruno (Encanto, 2021), The Bare Necessities (The Jungle Book, 1967), Feed The Birds (Mary Poppins, 1964), Who’s Afraid of Big Bad Wolf (Three Little Pigs, 1933) and It’s A Small World (1964). For these shorts, a Lisztian level of technical virtuosity was summoned and duly delivered.
Accompanied by orchestra were the concertante pieces, which worked like movements of a piano concerto, encompassing the songs Beauty and the Beast (1991), Can You Feel The Love Tonight (The Lion King, 1994) and Let It Go (Frozen, 2013).
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| Photo: Yong Junyi |
In order for sound to traverse the capacious 5000-seat Star Theatre, both pianist and orchestra were amplified to jarringly uncomfortable levels of loudness. While this certainly would not have done for Beethoven, it seemed almost necessary for Disney.
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| Photo: Yong Junyi |
For the sake of variety, guest musicians were invited and accompanied by Lang. Chinese erhu exponent Yimiao Chen starred in Reflection (Mulan, 1998) while guitarist Daryl Tay had a cameo in Remember Me (Coco, 2017). Vocalist Preston Lim touched hearts in You’ll Be In My Heart (Tarzan, 1999) and sang in idiomatic Spanish in Dos Oruguitas (Two Caterpillars, from Encanto). Also very impressive was jazz-singer Syakirah Noble who had the full measure of It’s All Right (Soul).
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| Photo: Yong Junyi |
Most touching was seeing Lang partnering his wife of six years, German-Korean pianist Gina Alice Redlinger as she sang When You Wish Upon A Star (Pinocchio, 1940), after which she herself turned accompanist for Lim. In between instrumental and vocal numbers were orchestral suites featuring the young but very experienced orchestra, shining in medleys of favourite tunes from The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Aladdin (1992) and Tangled (2010).
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| Photo: Yong Junyi |
At the end, a birthday cake was wheeled onstage as this evening marked Lang’s 43rd birthday to the day. The two-and-a-half-hour concert concluded with three generous solo encores. This included Rainbow Connection (The Muppet Movie, 1979), and to show he had not forsaken his classical background, Franz Liszt’s Liebestraum No.3 and Manuel de Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance.
Miked and milked to the max, the last work was the last word in vulgarity, but when all are having a good time, nobody really cared.
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| Photo: Yong Junyi |
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