Barbican Hall
We the assembled shuffle in our finery, clothes dancing with embroidered jasmine and cherry blossom. We wait, breath baited for the glowing diamond of classical music: Lang Lang, unassuming in black with a shock of dark hair, pacing on stage to weave the piano magic we have heard so much about.
Starting playing at 3 this man is proof of the places musical genius can take you. From winning a youth Tchaikovsky competition at 13, he has now played in front of the pope, worked with Metallica, Dior, and Pharrell Williams, designing a watch and the inside of a Bugatti on the way. He has a foundation to recruit future concert pianists and is an official UN ambassador of peace. If you told me this man also planned to bring piano to Mars I wouldn’t be surprised.
But tonight, none of that matters. It’s about him doing what he does best, tapping away on those ivory keys. Oh, wait. Did I mention he designed a Black Diamond Steinway? I’m getting sidetracked again. With a long relationship with the works of Frédéric Chopin we get the Mazurkas, interestingly also Robert Schumann’s illicit Kreisleriana.
Like the Chopin piece, our amuse-bouche is Gabriel Fauré’s Pavane in F sharp Minor, a reworking of an ancient dance written in 1887. In this case the stately Spanish Renaissance pavane. Originally an orchestral piece it was later transcribed for the piano, possibly by Fauré himself. Elegant, and refined this much-loved and repeated melody brings to mind circling snow. White shoulders bent in swooning circling dance, wind nibbling at the walls outside. Lang’s surprisingly stubby fingers glide along the keys, never flapped by the building melodic complexity as Fauré’s skilfully twists more and more out of the original formulaic pattern.
To break up the two reworked prancing pieces we have Schumann’s early work, written in just four days in 1838, as he secretly wooed Clara Wieck. Miss Wieck found it “wild, fantastic, and of the deepest meaning” and who can argue with her? It has all the turbulence, fiery passion and confliction of early love/infatuation. The eight movements pass through impulsivity, introspection, flame, longing and vulnerability. To close your eyes you can feel the thumping of the young Schumann’s heart, as the rapid shifts of mood cement this as a Romantic classic (within the classical world). This, more than the Fauré gives Lang a chance to show off, tossing his thick head of ebony hair, the fingers seem to attack the keys in the frothy climatic sections, especially in the final triumphant Schnell und Spielend. The rage and reconciliation, range of feeling that can be captured by some levers, small hammers, white teeth, a clever brain and some again surprisingly small fingers astounds. Maybe it’s a touch melodramatic, but what can you expect from the father of German romanticism? After all who hasn’t overdone it slightly in love?
After a decorously enjoyed interval, we have Chopin’s Mazurkas and a Polonaise in F sharp Minor. Having composed 59 of these, the Polish composer’s connection to his homeland and his elevation of the rustic peasant dance to “art music” is famous. Coquettish, reminding one of a spring breeze, a dance around a hay bail and a refined drawing room all at once. Chopin is a master, trilling and reworking the rhythmic builds pulling it and bringing the focus down and up in tempo. We frolic up into racing sections and then tumble down again as if rolling down a hill covered in wildflowers. Always caught between the expert digits of Lang, slack-jawed as he grasps such a bright yet slippery section of music as if he was just out for a morning stroll in the weak spring sunshine.
Lang bows and is off, ushered into the green room by security. But is he done? Surely he is not, we are treated to a swelling and quietly mournful Franz Liszt – Consolation No.2 and more poignantly personally, Claude Debussy’s Clare De Lune. This song has been running through my life, consciously and un, played (according to my mum) while I was being born. I found myself drawn to it as I discovered classical music as a teenager. Later it was playing as I was proposed to by my now fiancé, yet I have up until this concert never heard it live. Lang’s perfect pacing, giving the pauses and repetition all the needed gravity almost brought tears to my eyes. Impressive, emotive and extraordinary: a fitting description for this true renaissance man’s talent.
You have until the 6th of October, Pinch tickets HERE!
