Another issue of The New Yorker, another full day reading pleasure.
1. Musical Events: The Wow Factor: Lang Lang and Yundi Li at Carnegie Hall. by Alex Ross.
Reading how other people write about music is always an indulgence. The words and phrases sound almost better than the music itself to my ears.
On Lang Lang:
This work(BartÃ3k Second Concerto), written in the wake of nineteen-twenties neoclassicism, sparkles with Baroque-style counterpoint and Classical melodic play. Lang Lang, who deserves credit for taking on such non-standard fare, flew through the music with ease, but his touch was too hard. He tended to bang out chords at the end of a phrase, relying on extraneous accents to give shape to a line rather than finding its inner contour. BartÃ3ka�™s requests for leggiero, dolce, and graziosoa�”light, sweet, graceful playinga�”often went unheeded; p became mf, mf became ff. Only in the final movement were he and the composer fully in synch. Grins broke out in the audience during the climactic passage where the pianist pounds the lower end of the instrument in tandem with the timpani and bass drum.
On Yundi Li:
Yundi Li is a cooler presence. His playing is refined, almost severe. He has an intelligent way of shaping phrases, controlling dynamics, varying articulations. When Liszt uses the word dolcissimo in the score of the First Concertoa�”as sweetly as possiblea�”Li responds in kind; hea�™s a more naturally poetic soul than Lang Lang.
In the concertoa�™s finale , when orchestra and soloist trade dotted rhythms back and forth, Li kept barrelling ahead of the rest of the ensemble; you wanted him to enjoy these showy phrases a little more, pick up a trick or two from the swaggering brass. Still, it was a captivating performance, the kind that you remember as much for its quiet stretches as for its a�œwow factor,a� to borrow a term from a�œAmerican Idol.a� Leta�™s hope that Li branches out from his favorite Chopin and Liszt. He could deliver a superlative performance of the BartÃ3k Second.
