In 2019, Mr. Lang’s Piano Book was the album I looped the most throughout the year, bar none. These familiar songs that always come from my next door neighbor’s piano child and that my daughter has since started practicing are really great to have Lang as an example song.
In the past, I always thought of Lang Lang as a show-off player. But listening to him play Debussy in “The Piano Book” was so romantic, my God, how can Lang be so romantic. Also playing “Moonlight”, it was really much better than Alice Sara Ott, the best-selling pianist of the same DG. As well as playing Chelney 299, “It makes you feel like flying”, says Lang in the clip. “Chelny is the wing that leads you to freedom”, really well said; and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence”, Lang is one of the rare people who can play this famous piece with his own flavor.
Including Bach.
In The Piano Book, Lang plays two Bach pieces. A prelude and a minuet in G major, both essential for learning the piano. Among other things, Lang Lang is not promiscuous and maintains restraint alongside his romantic overtones. He also uses advanced pedals and is at Home during his daughter’s Epidemic just listening to Mr. Lang’s Fanfare and playing the Bach minuet by himself.
So, when I learned that Lang was coming out with the Gothenburg Variations next, I was super excited.
Because, I’m also a fan of Gould.
For a long Time, Gould’s Gothenburg Variations were my bedtime sedative. I can’t say how familiar I am with Gould, but basically, the two versions of Göteborg before and after, where Gould will hum next, I should be able to give you early warning while listening.
It’s also why I later went and listened to Turek’s DG version, several different versions of Goldberg by Xiaomei Zhu, Peter Selgin, Sokolov, etc. I don’t know why it appealed to me so much, but I let it play on its own, without disturbing my sleep.
But I didn’t expect Lang Lang’s Goldberg Variations to be so bad. It was as bad as a pinch, as bad as a back, as bad as a lump in my throat.
The reason I was on pins and needles was because Lang Lang’s “I don’t know what to do”. Each interpreter has his own version of the Goldberg: Gould’s youthful and untamed spirit, Turek’s solemnity and mysticism (the first version of the Goldberg I heard was actually from Turek, almost 20 years ago, when he was taken in by Samsung), Ms. Zhu Xiaomei’s serenity and the way of Laozhuang, and so on. But what is the message of Goldberg by Mr. Lang? I listened to it many times, but I didn’t get what Mr. Lang wanted to show through the song at all. The god of the Gothenburg lies to a large extent in its universal religiousness – a word I made up, i.e. Bach, a devout believer, gave the piece a half-human, half-divine light, and I can hear their understanding of the theme of Life in all of the masters’ versions. But. What the hell is Lang Lang doing? Constantly showing off his skills, constantly inflating his ego, constantly showing how beautiful his ornamental sound is. And then what? All that’s left is empty and boring.
The reason for this is that Lang Lang is cloaked in “romanticism” and distorts the work as he sees fit. When I first heard Lang Lang play Bach’s miniatures, I thought he was able to hold it together, and when I first heard the Aria from Gothenburg, it was clear that he would continue with the Romantic approach. What’s going on when the full song is released? Is the so-called romanticism an indulgence of the ego? Is it about going faster than everyone else and slower than everyone else? Is it that the dance variation has a chicken’s blood in it, and the low points are like the sister of the forest has a disease? For example, in the 26th variation, the 16th notes are really fast, but this is a fancy piece, is this a witty piece? You are playing Bach, Mr. Lang. Even if Lang plays the ornamental notes beautifully, is that right? Yes, there is no standard for Bach, but with so many master versions in front of us, we have ears, right? Is this the kind of Bach you understand, when the essential holiness of the Gothenburg is completely lost for the sake of deliberate novelty?
The reason for this is Lang’s understanding of Bach and his aesthetic taste. I’m not really qualified to criticize Mr. Lang’s aesthetic sense, but I’m a little bit more qualified to say that his old home decoration is no good. He is very good at performing lyrical and high works, but his understanding of Bach is not good enough for me. If you play the Gothenburg Variations with soul, it’s a waste of time. When I listen to Gould’s 1981 version, I always have a feeling of being out of my body (I’m not asleep), and in every variation, even if there are many variations, Gould can always hold his breath so that I can hear the cinema of his life. And Mr. Lang’s “Gothenburg”, he said he had been practicing for this piece for twenty-eight years, and that’s it? It’s true that Mr. Lang’s technique is the best in the world, but sometimes technique really doesn’t mean everything.
There is a question on Zhihu that asks: What are the songs that are like a lifetime after listening to them? The answer to this question is the Gothenburg Variations, Bingo, but not Lang Lang’s. This life is too confusing and too twisted.
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