2 May 2003

London Philharmonic Orchestra / Tadaaki Otaka

Lang Lang – Mendelssohn Piano Concerto No.1

Royal Festival Hall

By Matthew Rye

“From a whisper to a dazzling pyrotechnic finale”

The Chinese-born pianist Lang Lang may no longer be a teenager, but he has lost none of his precocity, two years after his “launch” on the Western concert scene at the age of 18. And there are few works more suited to his youthful, high-spirited playing than Mendelssohn’s G minor Piano Concerto, written when the composer wasn’t much older than Lang Lang is now. With the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Tadaaki Otaka giving fervent support, he tore into the fiery opening movement, missing a degree of its Mendelssohnian lightness of touch, perhaps, but energising the music with his forward carefully articulated sound.

Lang Lang is a master of contrasts, and in the gentle song of the Andante slow movement he found delicacy and lyricism to match the warm phrasing of the orchestral cellos – there was a particularly poignant episode at the movement’s heart, when the piano tone was taken down to barely a whisper. And he had all the command in his technique to dazzle in the pyrotechnics of the finale: the swiftness and agility of the fingerwork were stunning, and the phrasing supple. Lang Lang has had his critics for some of his performances of “heavier” works in the piano repertoire, but here he was well matched to a work all too rarely heard in concert.