Concert Review: Four-Armed is Forewarned

The Philadelphia Orchestra opens Carnegie Hall
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The pianist Lang Lang. Presumably this is not how he injured his left hand before Wednesday night's season-opening Carnegie Hall concert where he played with Chick Corea and Maxim Lando. Photo © Sony Classical.

How do you get three pianists to play together?

That conundrum, explored by only a few composers over the centuries, was what faced Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra as they prepared for Wednesday night's concert opening the 2017-18 season at Carnegie Hall. The program featured two Leonard Bernstein works flanking George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. This was an important concert for the resurgent Philadelphians, who missed their chance to play opening night three years ago. It was also a crucial concert for music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, whose profile has risen in New York since he accepted the post of music director at the Metropolitan Opera, effective in the 2020 season.

Concert Review: The Return of the Flash

Lang Lang at Carnegie Hall.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

Lang Lang. Photo by Felix Broede for Deutsche Grammophon. © 2011 Universal Classics.

The pianist Lang Lang is a formidable talent. At Tuesday night's recital at Carnegie Hall, the last major subscription concert of the 2012 season, Mr. Lang gave a performance that favored style over musical substance.

Mr. Lang has made no secret of his idolization of Franz Liszt, even releasing a Sony collection called My Piano Hero. His playing is not just Lisztian in its prodigious technical ability--he also incorporates a free-form, Romantic approach to tempo and structure. Here, he offered works Bach, Schubert and Chopin. While the written notes were always played, this concert seemed to err, if it can be said, on the side of virtuosity.

Superconductor 2011 Gift Guide Part V: Piano Music

12 days of Christmas, and 88 keys.

A piano just makes the holidays better. Scene from The Simpsons
episode Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire © 1989 FOX/Gracie Films/Matt Groening.

The last page of the 2011 Gift Guide features piano music: selections of the best piano recitals of the year, and a survey of major reissues and boxed sets. For the piano lover, this is your shopping Liszt. Hey, he turned 200 this year.


SINGLE DISCS

Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 3, Symphonic Dances Op. 45

Atlanta Symphony Orchestra cond. Robert Spano 

This exciting disc of Rachmaninoff's most challenging concerto features Garrick Ohlsson meeting the work head-on. Mr. Ohlsson interlocks smoothly with Mr. Spano. They craft a thrilling ride through the work's three movements. With an energetic set of Symphonic Dances that demonstrates the quality of this Southern orchestra.

Hélène Grimaud: Mozart Piano Concertos Nos. 19 and 23 (Deutsche Grammophon)

The French pianist delves into Mozart with her first recordings of these lyric piano concertos. As a bonus, soprano Mojca Erdmann sings the concert aria "Chi'io mi scordi di te?" a welcome rarity.

Alice Sara Ott: Beethoven (Deutsche Grammophon)

The talented Ms. Ott goes Ludwig with this disc, featuring her feather-light chording and high-speed run through the Waldstein Sonata. The last movement is eloquently played and almost impressionistic in its soft first statement of the main theme. 

Marc-Andre Hamelin: Etudes (Hyperion)
The most significant virtuoso working today gets in on Lisztomania, taking on the formidable Piano Sonata, which manages to fuse four movements into one contiguous whole. Mr. Hamelin also applies his stunning technique to playful works: the Fantasia on B-A-C-H and three aural postcards from Venice and Naples.

Lang Lang: My Piano Hero. (Sony Classical)

Mr. Lang celebrates Liszt's 200th birthday with this exuberant disc of favorites and virtuoso workouts, anchored by a rock-solid performance of the First Piano Concerto. 

BOXED SETS:

Schubert: Piano Sonatas and Impromptus,  Andras Schiff, Piano (Decca, 9 CDs)

András Schiff is one of the most eloquent pianists on the concert circuit. Schubert is one of his particular strengths, and this cycle captures some of his best playing at an early peak. Crisp keyboard diction, crystal-clear digital sound and a sense of intimacy, especially in the beautifully played Impromptus.

Martha Argerich: Solos and Duos (EMI, 6 CDs)

After DG and Decca re-ignited the Cult of Argerich with their re-issues of her classic solo recitals, chamber works and piano concertos, it was time for her seocnd label, EMI to follow suit. This set find the Chilean pianist applying her skills to solo recitals and works for piano and violin 

Maurizio Pollini: 20th Century (Deutsche Grammophon, 6 CDs)

The fearless Mr. Pollini makes "difficult" modern piano music easy to understand with these deceptively simple performances. Featuring his account of the knotty works by Stravinsky, Bartók, Schoenberg, Webern, and other so-called modernists who threw out the rule books a century ago and created a brave new sonic world.

Alfred Brendel: Complete Beethoven Sonatas and Concertos (Decca, 12 CDs)
A long-awaited reissue of the Alfred Brendel "big box", all of his celebrated recordings of the piano sonatas and his first cycle of the five concertos, played with Bernard Haitink and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Top-notch Beethoven at a bargain-basement price. And if you like Mr. Brendel's playing, his equally celebrated Schubert cycle was also reissued this year.

Leslie Howard: The Complete Liszt Piano Music (Hyperion, 99 CDs)
This exceptional cycle contains all the Liszt piano music. The sonatas, poems, concertos. The Années de la Pelerinage. The Hungarian Rhapsodies. Even the opera transcriptions and piano versions of orchestral works by Beethoven, Berlioz and Wagner. All captured in superb performances, in glittering sound. This bread-box sized box is the deep end for the piano addict, and the most important reissue of 2011.


Check out the rest of the 2011 Superconductor Gift Guide:

Part I: Gigantic Boxed Sets

Part II: Slightly Smaller Boxed Sets

Part III: Beethoven for Christmas
Part IV: Opera Recordings

Concert Review: A Celebration of Birth and Death

Lang Lang celebrates Liszt's 200th at the Kimmel Center.

This didn't actually happen at the concert, but it's what Liszt sounds like.
Pianist Lang Lang. Photo © 2011 courtesy Sony Classical.

On Saturday night, the Philadelphia Orchestra, led by Chief Conductor Charles Dutoit, celebrated the birth of a composer and the death of a dictator. The composer: Franz Liszt, whose 200th birthday was celebrated by guest pianist Lang Lang. The dictator: Joseph Stalin, whose systematic terrorization of Russian composers remains a black memory of the last century.

The program opened with Dmitri Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony. With this work, Shostakovich broke a self-imposed silence following the second round of Soviet artist purges in the aftermath of World War II.  One of the composer's most popular and tightly constructed symphonies, the Tenth sets the composer's autobiographical "D-S-C-H" theme (D-E♭-C-B♮) against a whirling tornado of sound representing Stalin and his thugs. In the final showdown, the Shostakovich theme wins, sounding out triumphantly in the brass.

From its subtle, almost imperceptible opening in the double basses, Mr. Dutoit led this work with passion and authority. He bent almost double in the fast "Stalin" movement, driving the orchestra with precision where other conductors generate brassy noise. The last two movements featured stellar wind playing from the Philadelphians, climaxing in a driving reprise of the "motto" theme in brass and timpani.


The Liszt celebration started with a choice that reflected Liszt as a showman: Karl Müller-Berghaus' orchestration of the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. This flashy piano piece (featured in Tom and Jerry cartoons and a memorable scene in Who Framed Roger Rabbit) was played with charm by the full orchestra.

When Lang Lang took the stage, nobody fainted. Nobody threw their panties, room keys, or other fannish items. The lights in Verizon Hall were brightened to facilitate filming, and the genial pianist sat down at the Steinway to play Liszt's First Piano Concerto. 

Liszt built this concerto by folding four movements into one, which can create pacing problems that the conductor and soloist must work together to solve. Mr. Lang played the stentorian opening with a powerful attack, and then played the first lyric outpourings of his instrument with searching, Romantic tone. The thrilling effect, a trill at the high end of the keyboard, the sound of a butterfly landing on one end of the piano.

Mr. Lang attended the Curtis Institute and has great reverence for the Philadelphia Orchestra. Their skilled accompaniment showed that the respect was mutual. Pianist and orchestra down-shifted into the slow movement and then to the short Allegro with its chiming triangle. The finale brought all the movements together in a stunning display of virtuoso playing that also validated Liszt as a masterful composer for orchestra.

If Mr. Lang chose to, (or were allowed to) smoke cigars onstage at Verizon Hall, his stogie would be preserved in a jeweled reliquary. He played an encore instead: a lush, sensuous reading of the Liebestraum. The evening ended with pianist, orchestra and even audience joining for a bicentennial reading of "Happy Birthday" for Mr. Liszt, complete with a final trill.