Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Lang Lang on Jay Leno

Tonight. He'll be playing Rachmaninoff. Prelude no5 in g minor, op23.

http://www.nbc.com/The_Tonight_Show_with_Jay_Leno/index.shtml

a live telecast with millions across america watching.. imagine if you make a mistake.

i don't know how these pianists do it.. my fingertips would be wet from sweat and with all that pressure i'd probably make major mistakes

Leno isn't live, it's recorded at 5:00 Pacific time, as far as I know.

ah good call... well say he was performing with conan o'brien?

Is Conan live? I thought that all those late night shows (Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, David Letterman, etc.) were recorded earlier in the day than they air.

well it says LIVE with conan o'brien.. so i reckon it is.. then again i used to work right by the letterman studio and i recall crowds lining up around 4pm so who the heck really knows.

Conan is certainly not live. I've been an audience member there before, and they begin taping at 5:30 p.m. [Edit: Maybe 4:30 -- can't remember.]

I once heard that a good trick to combat performance anxiety is to imagine your audience naked. So I think the performer would just have to imagine all Americans naked for this occasion.

(jgoo, thanks for the heads-up. )

Here's how our TV schedule announced Leno's line up tonite.

"The Tonight Show With Jay Leno (Talk / Tabloid) Actor Sylvester Stallone, goose expert, Lang Lang performs. TV14 CC Stereo"

I thought it was an interesting combination.

Bob

did I miss it? He had on Sylvester Stallone, I went to practice the piano, now I turn the tv back on and it is a lady who is a duck expert. dang,

he was last

If you haven't seen it by now, you have missed it.

Lots of very impressive pyrotechniques, actually. Not note-perfect, but daring dynamics and dashing rhythms. Reminds my of Tom and Jerry cartoon, no disrespect to the pianist.

I wish I had better sound system and/or the Leno crew had mic'ed it better. It just sounded flat/compressed/thin/dry, and I don't think it's the pianist's or the piano's fault.

I agree it didn't sound very good. I don't know whose fault it was, but it just sounded empty.

^ Ya, I have a feeling the sound engineers may have toned down the dynamics after the recording of the show.

Did anyone else notice he didn't play the piece he was supposed to?

Yeah, he played Hungarian Rhapsody #2. To me, that was a smart move on his part, as everybody recongnizes a few parts of it; in fact, people started to clap when he got the most famous part. :p

HOWEVER... While the guy obviously is an amazing talent... HE BUTCHERED it. To me, he took what is great about it, and just added a bunch of stuff to wow the audience. To me, that wasn't necessary, as the piece, as written by Liszt, is enough to please an audience.

As I said, amazing talent, but he kinda ruined the piece. :p

Darn, I missed a performance of the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2... I just thought it was Rachmaninoff's 5th prelude

You didn't miss much. Just 2 or 3 minutes of weird faces, whip lash, and virtuosic, but uninspired playing.

Do you believe, as I do, that if he had just played it as Liszt wrote it, it would have been an amazing performance?

That is the first time I have actually watched Lang Lang. He is amazing. But, he absolutely ruined it by going into looney mode, no pun intended. :p

He was skipping around, hitting out of key, hitting random notes, all with amazing agility and stamina... but with no regard to the actual composition. There is one part if I remember right, where Liszt wrote "ad lib"... Lang should have left his adlibing to just that part, not the whole piece.

However, I gotta say, that is the first time I have seen someone play that piece in video, besides a rabbit, a tomcat, or a duck.

I have fiddled around with it before, but it's pretty cool watching someone else play it.

I have never seen Lang Lang play and not go into "looney mode". It's not something he just did this time. He always seems more interested in the acrobatics and the attention than he is the music.

Well you know, it was Tom and Jerry that inspired Lang Lang to become a pianist. Specifically, their playing of the Hungarian Rhapsody, acutally. Read this:

http://www.asahi.com/english/arts/TKY200503040129.html