Liszt: My Piano Hero (CD review)

Piano Concerto No. 1; various solo pieces. Lang Lang, piano; Valery Gergiev, Vienna Philharmonic. Sony Classical 88697891402 (with bonus DVD).

In the past twenty-odd years Chinese pianist Lang Lang has become something of a phenomenon, an international superstar beloved of millions of classical and nonclassical fans alike. In the booklet note to the 2011 album reviewed here, Liszt: My Piano Hero, he says his greatest inspiration as a pianist was watching a Tom and Jerry cartoon featuring Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. Lang goes on to say, "Liszt is my hero! He changed classical music completely. As a performer he revolutionised piano playing, and as a composer he opened the door to modern music. As a teacher he was influential well into the 20th century, because many great artists were pupils of his pupils, or their pupils in a third generation." Fair enough, and Lang proves his admiration for the composer by devoting the album to an almost all-Liszt program of solo and concerto works.

The disc begins with a series of short solo numbers by the subject of the album, Hungarian composer and pianist Franz Liszt (1811-1886). Lang Lang alternates slow and fast pieces, soft and loud, playing them delicately, brilliantly, or showily as the occasion dictates, with all the passion and feeling we figure on from him, though never overdone. The opening Romance in E minor, for instance, is sweetly evocative. La Campanella in G-sharp minor is sprightly and strong. The Consolation No. 3 in D-flat major is aptly melancholy and moody. Then the Grand Galop chromatique in E-flat major does just that: gallop across the sound stage in high spirits.

And so it goes, with the celebrated Lieberstraum No. 3 in A-flat major as dreamy as ever and Lang adding just the right amount of gravity and weight to it to make it seem more than just light filler. After a couple of rousing Hungarian Rhapsodies for Piano (Nos. 6 and 15), Lang briefly forsakes Liszt for Schubert (Ave Maria) and returns for Liszt's piano transcription of Wagner's Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde.

The CD ends with the Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major, which under Lang is every bit as heroic and triumphant as we expect it to be. Here, we find Lang Lang supported by Valery Gergiev and the Vienna Philharmonic, one of the world's genuinely great orchestras. The result is taut and romantic, with perfectly judged tempos and emotionally charged phrases. It's a moving, stirring, engaging interpretation, including a wonderfully lyrical and flowing central movement and a chipper finale.

So how does the relatively young (as of this writing, he had not yet turned thirty) Lang Lang stack up against some of his more-illustrious older colleagues: Argerich, Ashkenazy, Brendel, Kovacevich, Pollini, and the like (or even those closer to his age like Kissin, Grimaud, Pletnev, and the rest)? Well, Lang is surely more flamboyant than most, even in so toned down an album as this one of Liszt. It remains for us to see how well Lang's rock-star celebrity status will hold up in the long run, say in another thirty years.

Anyway, in addition to the compact disc, the Digipak set includes a bonus DVD titled A Day with My Piano Hero, about eleven-and-a-half minutes, which follows the pianist as he practices, plays, and fusses about the album he's making. This one is for dedicated Lang Lang fans only.

The sound of the piano solos, recorded in April, 2011, at Teldex Studio, Berlin, Germany, is excellent, the piano appearing firm and glowing yet with good detail, clarity, and impact. It's an exceptionally realistic recording, miked at a moderate distance that doesn't stretch the instrument across one's listening area, while easily filling the room with a pleasantly ambient acoustic. Note, however, that because the music displays a wide dynamic range, you may find yourself having to readjust the volume on occasion. It's a small price to pay for the realism of the presentation.

Sony recorded the Piano Concerto in concert in June, 2011, at the Musikverein, Vienna, Austria, and here things are not quite as good as the studio solos. In order to minimize audience noise, the audio engineers recorded the Concerto rather closely, so the whole thing is kind of in our lap. Still, the miking provides a clean, fairly transparent sound without being hard, bright, or edgy. The sonics do, however, seem somewhat constricted in climaxes, the dynamics not expanding as we might hope. Nor are the frequency extremes, bass and treble, as extended as they might have been. Thankfully, the folks at Sony did not include any distracting audience noise or any final applause.

JJP

Meet the Staff

Meet the Staff
John J. Puccio, Founder and Contributor

Understand, I'm just an everyday guy reacting to something I love. And I've been doing it for a very long time, my appreciation for classical music starting with the musical excerpts on the Big Jon and Sparkie radio show in the early Fifties and the purchase of my first recording, The 101 Strings Play the Classics, around 1956. In the late Sixties I began teaching high school English and Film Studies as well as becoming interested in hi-fi, my audio ambitions graduating me from a pair of AR-3 speakers to the Fulton J's recommended by The Stereophile's J. Gordon Holt. In the early Seventies, I began writing for a number of audio magazines, including Audio Excellence, Audio Forum, The Boston Audio Society Speaker, The American Record Guide, and from 1976 until 2008, The $ensible Sound, for which I served as Classical Music Editor.

Today, I'm retired from teaching and use a pair of bi-amped VMPS RM40s loudspeakers for my listening. In addition to writing for the Classical Candor blog, I served as the Movie Review Editor for the Web site Movie Metropolis (formerly DVDTown) from 1997-2013. Music and movies. Life couldn't be better.

Karl Nehring, Editor and Contributor

For more than 20 years I was the editor of The $ensible Sound magazine and a regular contributor to both its equipment and recordings review pages. I would not presume to present myself as some sort of expert on music, but I have a deep love for and appreciation of many types of music, "classical" especially, and have listened to thousands of recordings over the years, many of which still line the walls of my listening room (and occasionally spill onto the furniture and floor, much to the chagrin of my long-suffering wife). I have always taken the approach as a reviewer that what I am trying to do is simply to point out to readers that I have come across a recording that I have found of interest, a recording that I think they might appreciate my having pointed out to them. I suppose that sounds a bit simple-minded, but I know I appreciate reading reviews by others that do the same for me — point out recordings that they think I might enjoy.

For readers who might be wondering about what kind of system I am using to do my listening, I should probably point out that I do a LOT of music listening and employ a variety of means to do so in a variety of environments, as I would imagine many music lovers also do. Starting at the more grandiose end of the scale, the system in which I do my most serious listening comprises Marantz CD 6007 and Onkyo CD 7030 CD players, NAD C 658 streaming preamp/DAC, Legacy Audio PowerBloc2 amplifier, and a pair of Legacy Audio Focus SE loudspeakers. I occasionally do some listening through pair of Sennheiser 560S headphones. I miss the excellent ELS Studio sound system in our 2016 Acura RDX (now my wife's daily driver) on which I had ripped more than a hundred favorite CDs to the hard drive, so now when driving my 2022 Accord EX-L Hybrid I stream music from my phone through its adequate but not outstanding factory system. For more casual listening at home when I am not in my listening room, I often stream music through the phone into a Vizio soundbar system that has tolerably nice sound for such a diminutive physical presence. And finally, at the least grandiose end of the scale, I have an Ultimate Ears Wonderboom II Bluetooth speaker for those occasions where I am somewhere by myself without a sound system but in desperate need of a musical fix. I just can’t imagine life without music and I am humbly grateful for the technology that enables us to enjoy it in so many wonderful ways.

William (Bill) Heck, Webmaster and Contributor

Among my early childhood memories are those of listening to my mother playing records (some even 78 rpm ones!) of both classical music and jazz tunes. I suppose that her love of music was transmitted genetically, and my interest was sustained by years of playing in rock bands – until I realized that this was no way to make a living. The interest in classical music was rekindled in grad school when the university FM station serving as background music for studying happened to play the Brahms First Symphony. As the work came to an end, it struck me forcibly that this was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard, and from that point on, I never looked back. This revelation was to the detriment of my studies, as I subsequently spent way too much time simply listening, but music has remained a significant part of my life. These days, although I still can tell a trumpet from a bassoon and a quarter note from a treble clef, I have to admit that I remain a nonexpert. But I do love music in general and classical music in particular, and I enjoy sharing both information and opinions about it.

The audiophile bug bit about the same time that I returned to classical music. I’ve gone through plenty of equipment, brands from Audio Research to Yamaha, and the best of it has opened new audio insights. Along the way, I reviewed components, and occasionally recordings, for The $ensible Sound magazine. Most recently I’ve moved to my “ultimate system” consisting of a BlueSound Node streamer, an ancient Toshiba multi-format disk player serving as a CD transport, Legacy Wavelet II DAC/preamp/crossover, dual Legacy PowerBloc2 amps, and Legacy Signature SE speakers (biamped), all connected with decently made, no-frills cables. With the arrival of CD and higher resolution streaming, that is now the source for most of my listening.

Ryan Ross, Contributor

I started listening to and studying classical music in earnest nearly three decades ago. This interest grew naturally out of my training as a pianist. I am now a musicologist by profession, specializing in British and other symphonic music of the 19th and 20th centuries. My scholarly work has been published in major music journals, as well as in other outlets. Current research focuses include twentieth-century symphonic historiography, and the music of Jean Sibelius, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Malcolm Arnold.

I am honored to contribute writings to Classical Candor. In an age where the classical recording industry is being subjected to such profound pressures and changes, it is more important than ever for those of us steeped in this cultural tradition to continue to foster its love and exposure. I hope that my readers can find value, no matter how modest, in what I offer here.


Bryan Geyer, Technical Analyst

I initially embraced classical music in 1954 when I mistuned my car radio and heard the Heifetz recording of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. That inspired me to board the new "hi-fi" DIY bandwagon. In 1957 I joined one of the pioneer semiconductor makers and spent the next 32 years marketing transistors and microcircuits to military contractors. Home audio DIY projects remained a personal passion until 1989 when we created our own new photography equipment company. I later (2012) revived my interest in two channel audio when we "downsized" our life and determined that mini-monitors + paired subwoofers were a great way to mate fine music with the space constraints of condo living.

Visitors that view my technical papers on this site may wonder why they appear here, rather than on a site that features audio equipment reviews. My reason is that I tried the latter, and prefer to publish for people who actually want to listen to music; not to equipment. My focus is in describing what's technically beneficial to assure that the sound of the system will accurately replicate the source input signal (i. e. exhibit high accuracy) without inordinate cost and complexity. Conversely, most of the audiophiles of today strive to achieve sound that's euphonic, i.e. be personally satisfying. In essence, audiophiles seek sound that's consistent with their desire; the music is simply a test signal.

Mission Statement

It is the goal of Classical Candor to promote the enjoyment of classical music. Other forms of music come and go--minuets, waltzes, ragtime, blues, jazz, bebop, country-western, rock-'n'-roll, heavy metal, rap, and the rest--but classical music has been around for hundreds of years and will continue to be around for hundreds more. It's no accident that every major city in the world has one or more symphony orchestras.

When I was young, I heard it said that only intellectuals could appreciate classical music, that it required dedicated concentration to appreciate. Nonsense. I'm no intellectual, and I've always loved classical music. Anyone who's ever seen and enjoyed Disney's Fantasia or a Looney Tunes cartoon playing Rossini's William Tell Overture or Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 can attest to the power and joy of classical music, and that's just about everybody.

So, if Classical Candor can expand one's awareness of classical music and bring more joy to one's life, more power to it. It's done its job. --John J. Puccio

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"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa

"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa