The Chopin Album (CD review)

Lang Lang, piano. Sony Classical 88725489602.

Chinese pianist Lang Lang turned thirty in 2012, the year he made this album. Turning thirty has become something of a rite of passage for most folks, a transition from youth into adulthood. So, might we expect a more-mature Lang Lang in this program of solo Chopin selections the pianist calls The Chopin Album?

Lang Lang has become something of a phenomenon the past few decades, an international superstar beloved of millions of classical and nonclassical fans alike. There is no doubting his technical skill and virtuosity, but his actual musicianship, his artistic sensitivity, has shown its ups and downs. Of the several of his albums I’ve listened to, he has not exactly bowled me over. In his Rachmaninov performances (DG), I thought he was more than a little bland, and while his Liszt album (Sony) seemed more robust, its sound failed to impress me.

In preparation for listening to Lang Lang’s selection of Chopin pieces, I first listened to a few minutes from several old favorite Chopin interpreters: Arthur Rubinstein, Maurizo Pollini, Idil Biret, and Van Cliburn. Now, I understand that some critics refuse to make comparisons and insist upon evaluating all musicians and performances on their own merits rather than upon how they stack up against someone or something else. While I agree in part, I don’t think one can make any critical judgments without comparisons. It is, after, by virtue of comparison that we understand the world around us: We cannot know “big” without knowing “small.” We cannot tell short or tall unless we have an understanding through experience of all sorts of heights. We cannot know if a car handles well or badly unless we have driven any number of cars. I remember back in the Fifties and early Sixties how the little Volkswagen Bug amazed many American drivers with its seemingly fantastic handling because the only cars most Americans had ever driven were big, ungainly Detroit beasts. The first time I drove a rear-engine Bug, it scared the daylights out of me it cornered so poorly because I was driving an MGA roadster in those days. So, yeah, I believe comparisons sometimes help in one’s decision-making.

Lang Lang begins his album with Chopin’s second set of twelve Etudes, Op. 25, which he plays with great enthusiasm, if not always with the kind of insight or feeling I had hoped for and invited the first of several comparisons. Here, I compared Lang Lang’s rendering of the Étude No. 11 in A minor, “Winter Wind,” to that of Van Cliburn, where Cliburn sounds urgent and exciting and Lang Lang more sentimental and extroverted. It was the beginning of various such comparisons that followed a similar pattern.

In the Nocturne in F major, No. 1, Op. 15, Maurizo Pollini is light, graceful, passionate, warm, and personal. Lang Lang appears merely to be generating a series of well-played notes, without much of the personal appeal or soul of Pollini’s interpretation. In the Grand Waltz Brillante in E-flat major, Op. 18, Idil Biret’s reading seems more filled with energy and communication; with Lang Lang we get more pushing and pulling of the music, speeding up and slowing down, with yet not quite the energy of Ms. Biret. Still, Lang Lang plays the piece quite smoothly, almost effortlessly.

In the Waltz in D-flat major, Op. 64, the famous “Minute Waltz,” Arthur Rubinstein is ultrasophisticated and suave; we experience genuine feeling in the music without the performance ever seeming over-the-top. Lang Lang, on the other hand, is dazzling, as we would expect, but not nearly as intimate. Then, in the Nocturne in E-flat major, No. 2, Op. 55, Pollini is rich and eloquent, whereas Lang Lang doesn’t sound as though he is playing the same piece of music, he takes it so slowly and dreamily.

A booklet note where Lang Lang speaks to Gramophone editor James Jolly tells us that for Lang Lang, “‘I’d no idea there were so many ways of expressing emotions.’ And Chopin, for Lang Lang, is a composer all about emotion.” Certainly, the pianist conveys emotion, probably better in these Chopin pieces than in the previous albums I’ve heard from him. Yet one is also probably better off hearing his interpretations by themselves, without making comparisons to cloud one’s appreciation.

Don’t get me wrong; I think Lang Lang is a very fine pianist, just maybe not a great one yet. For the time being, I’ll stick to my old favorites.

Sony made most of the recording in the Rundfunk-Zentrum, Berlin, in 2012, except the final track, Tristesse, from the movie The Flying Machine, featuring a vocal by the Danish singer-songwriter Oh Land. In the first nineteen tracks, Lang Lang’s piano sounds well judged, clear and focused, with good body and impact. It isn’t quite as resonant as the piano sound in the comparisons I made, but it holds up well enough.

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