You have to go back regularly to listen to extraordinary artists. Those who are debated. Those we love or hate, thanks to or because of their outrageously personal interpretations. We must go and hear those who are shaking up the lines, to follow the evolution of their journey. Hoping for happy surprises.
Monday evening, Lang Lang showed himself more virtuoso and spectacular than ever, but also more than ever locked into his image of an inspired musician defying technical and stylistic codes. Raised arm of a political or religious figure upon his entry on stage and final bows, Lang Lang did not deviate from his reputation as a star. The packed Victoria Hall confirms its popularity.
To the detriment of composers
From Fauré to Chopin via Schumann, Lang Lang has devoted himself to his favorite exercise: delivering his own musical universe through the prism of his phantasmagoria. And play on exaggerated theatrical postures. The problem is that these musical and physical tics are increasingly occurring to the detriment of composers.
What we can forgive in a child prodigy, nourished in particular by the culture of cartoons, becomes cumbersome in his forties. The Disneyland aspect of the atmosphere and the narration is tiring. The candy pink and pale blue colors of the songs are pushed to the limits of a romantic tale for toddlers. The dizzying surge of sound power is based on the absolute darkness of the bass and warlike digital attacks. A binary world that has matured little, with no openness to stylistic, historical, poetic or artistic reflection.
Exhibitions, concerts, theater, cinema… Ideas from “Time”
Mechanics of hyperbola
The entire program is thus immersed in the same overflow of nuances, movements and touches, the whole drowned in an immense bath of pedals and a jumble of notes. We could have expected astonishments in the Pavane op. 50 by Fauré, whose romantic beginning could correspond to the spirit of the Chinese. But it is a mechanism of hyperbole that is put in place from the first measures. Too much of everything, and, despite generous and seductive melodies, not enough sincere, simple and deep emotion, modesty or elegance.
THE Kreisleriana of Schumann? Same fight between delirious races into the abyss, emotional procrastination bordering on catalepsy and devastating abruptness. An outrageous, more than clinical picture of the composer’s madness. As for the 12 Mazurkas chosen by Chopin, considered more as a Lisztian orchestration than as an exploration of the Pole’s pianistic galaxy, they offer a few moments of grace in the slow and tender passages. But they all respond, with a Polonaise op. 44 launched at the speed of an assault tank and interspersed with declamatory pretties, with the same need for demonstration and self-affirmation. Until the caricature.
