From Chicago Sun-Times[/b]

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A wiser Lang Lang retains his charm, virtuosity [/b]

May 2, 2006

BY WYNNE DELACOMA Classical Music Critic


It's been almost seven years since Lang Lang, then an unknown, China-born, teenage piano student, wowed the crowd at the Ravinia Festival's 1999 gala concert as a last-minute replacement for Andre Watts. The irrepressible young pianist with the megawatt smile and powerhouse technique immediately soared to the kind of fame and fortune that earned him spots on TV talk shows and sold-out concert dates around the world.

Lang Lang has been a regular visitor here since then, and he was back Sunday afternoon in Symphony Center for a solo recital of works drawn from his most recent release on the DG label, titled "Memories.'' Now 23, Lang Lang is working his way from ebullient teenager to serious artist. Walking slowly onstage, his formerly bristly punkish hairdo grown long, he seemed to signal that he was putting away childish things. He is savvy enough, however, to hang on to some of the best of them -- his emotional involvement in the music, his obvious delight in his own prowess. The program of Mozart, Chopin, Schumann, Rachmaninoff and Liszt was studded with the kind of visceral thrills that the sold-out audience had desired.

Lang Lang has been studying occasionally with Daniel Barenboim, CSO music director and one of classical music's finest pianists, and some fruits of their partnership were clear Sunday. Both pianists play with a clarity of touch that is at once powerfully sculpted and crystalline, but Barenboim has little use for the rhapsodic gyrations and soulful glances that were central to Lang Lang's early performance arsenal. Lang Lang has toned them down of late, and in his opening work, Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 10 in C Major, K. 330, the balance between pristine phrasing and lyrical flow was neatly balanced.

In Chopin's commanding B Minor Piano Sonata, Op. 58, his performance was impetuous yet polished. At times, the breakneck scherzo movement sounded mechanical, as if his fingers were simply unpoetic pistons, and the momentum in the largo occasionally fell victim to his rapturous longueurs. But the concert's central work, Schumann's "Kinderszenen" ("Scenes From Childhood") was completely charming, its short episodes buoyant and sweetly colorful.

In Preludes Nos. 2 and 5 from Rachmaninoff's Op. 23 and Liszt's Petrarch's Sonnet No. 104 from Book 2 of the "Annees de pelerinage,'' Lang Lang happily unleashed his pianistic thunder. This was thrilling virtuoso playing, with few of the cartoonish excesses of the recital's final work, Vladimir Horowitz's transcription of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2.

Better a bit of cartoonish excess, however, than a middle-of-the-road performance. Lang Lang dedicated his final encore, Chopin's Etude Op. 10, No. 3, to Barenboim, calling him, "My teacher, who gave such great life experience to me through music.'' It was full of quiet grace, stormy drive and, best of all, personality. Smoother edges do not have to mean bland.

wdelacoma@suntimes.com

thanks for information , i have DVD from his recital in New-York.

Hi! Where can I get that DVD?!!

He probably is talking about LL's Carnegie Hall Debut recital, I guess.