Tchaikovsky’s collection of piano pieces The Seasons should really be called The Months, since its 12 individual movements celebrate the diverse attractions of January, February and so on. Though relatively lightweight in content, these dozen miniatures add up to a substantial work when played in their entirety, and they formed an attractive, unusual centrepiece to Lang Lang’s Albert Hall recital.
From a technical point of view they held no terrors for him – though they are regularly a good deal more difficult than their origin as items commissioned by a popular music magazine might suggest. More importantly, the pianist sought out the individual character of each of them, generating an almost impressionistic quality for June and an outdoor heartiness for September, subtitled The Hunt, as well as flaunting a winning combination of brilliance and elegance for the Ballroom Waltz that brings the year to a dazzling close.
Once or twice earlier on in the sequence, though, Lang Lang’s tone was on the brittle side – something evident, too, in his opener, Bach’s Italian Concerto. This was nevertheless a finely disciplined performance, pristine in its fingerwork and deploying carefully gradated dynamics to separate out the score’s main themes from its subsidiary ideas; but occasionally, and notwithstanding an imaginatively floated melodic line in the slow movement, it verged on the brash.
Lang Lang’s most testing assignments came in a second half consisting of all four of Chopin’s scherzos. Here, the technical demands were further ramped up, matched in each and every piece by equally daunting interpretative challenges. Once again, the pianist made light work of the technical difficulties, also providing a breadth of tonal variety impressively commensurate with the wide-ranging needs of the composer’s multifarious piano writing.
• At Royal Albert Hall, London, 22 April. Box office: 0845 401 5005.
.jpg?w=600)
