First of all, to my subscribers, you may have been surprised not to see a post yesterday. This indeed has been the first time since I started this blog nearly 6 month ago that I didn’t post anything on my regular schedule of every 2-3 days. I unfortunately had a health issue in the family. I’ll really target to get fully back on schedule with posts appearing at least every 3 days.
Second, to the Jazz fans among my readers, hope you don’t get bored, my blog has been rather focused on classical music for the last posts. I’m working on getting back to Jazz ASAP.
But well, one more on classical music.
This one was triggered by my mother in law, suggesting I should write about Lang Lang’s latest album. When I spoke to her, I mentioned that I hadn’t heard it yet, but wasn’t a big fan of Lang Lang in general. Her answer was, “So why don’t you compare it to something you like better?”.
Well, here we go.
“Hyped* classical music artists
Every once in a while there are musicians out there, that, usually helped either by YouTube (e.g. Valeria Lisitsa) or by the label (remember Vanessa Mae?) that are rather well-known even to a non classical audience, and have a certain pop-star following. Sometimes (e.g. Jonas Kaufmann) the hype is correlated with quality, more often than not, I find the correlation between fame and quality in classical music to be not very strong.
Lang Lang is a typical example. He’s probably today’s best known pianists (don’t have any data to back this up unfortunately). And as I said to my mother-in-law above, I have yet to hear a Lang Lang album I really like.
But thanks to my streaming subscription I could simply check the latest album out and make up my own mind.
The Chopin Scherzi
A word of introduction on the music: the album consists of the four Chopin Scherzi, and Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons for piano. I’m not very familiar with the latter, so I’m not going to comment on the performance.
However, I just love the Scherzi. There is an entire world in the 6-12 minutes of each one, and they are among my absolute favorite piano pieces by Chopin.
So my expectations were rather high. And I’m sorry to say I was disappointed.
No. 1 was just too nervous, to ADHD (my wife told me to switch albums when we listened to it together).
No. 2 is nicely flowing at the beginning, but getting a bit quirky over time, and again too nervous in the fast parts.
No. 3 is probably the best of the four, a bit too much still, but quite enjoyable nevertheless.
The worst was probably no. 4, just too much forte all over the place, and just too slow for my taste.
Benjamin Grosvenor
Now, as suggested by my wise mother-in-law, let me write about my recommended alternative.
And actually another form of “hype”, albeit at a smaller scale.
Benjamin Grosvenor at the tender age of 24 has won more awards already than others in a lifetime. He was Gramophone’s youngest-ever double award winner, and the rest of the British (and partially international) press went just as crazy about him.
So how’s the hype working out here?
Well actually, I’m a HUGE fan. His Chopin Liszt Ravel album, which features all 4 Scherzi, is just outstanding, and his more recent release Dances was not far behind in terms of quality (I mentioned it my comments about the 2015 Gramophone awards here).
There are obviously other outstanding versions of the Scherzi out there (Argerich for no. 3, Rubinstein, and the best I’ve heard was Kristin Zimerman for no. 2 in a live concert), but the recording here is pretty close to perfect.
My rating: 3 stars (Lang Lang) vs. 5 stars (Grosvenor)
You can find the Lang Lang here (Qobuz) if you really insist, and the Grosvenor here (Qobuz) and here (Prestoclassical).
The official “making of” of the Lang Lang in Paris album here:
musicophilesblog - From Keith Jarrett to Johannes Brahms 