Lang Lang: Dragon Songs (Plus DVD)

Amazon.com This is music of great diversity and charm. Lang Lang returns here to his native China for solo, chamber, and orchestral music. Those expecting great exoticisms will not find them here. We are all aware of how the East influenced the West in music – Debussy, Ravel, and other composers have picked up the harmonies and sonorities and made them familiar to us. But the music recorded here, all of it composed in the 20th century, is indebted to Western music, and indeed, there is hardly a jarring note to be found. The "exoticisms" are all comfortable. The "Yellow River" Piano Concerto, a work arranged by four composers in 1969 based on a 30-year-old choral cantata that was made up of socialist songs of praise, is a piece of pure late Romanticism and is reminiscent of Tchaikovsky and other late Romantics. One solo piano piece is 97 seconds of pure virtuosic joy ("Happy Times," by Zhu Jianer), and another ("Dance of Spring" by Sun Yiqiang) is a delicate, almost French Impressionist piece. The "Dance from Qiuci" by Zhao Jiping is a duet for piano and guanzi, a double-reed pipe, that will remind listeners of Klezmer music. Each track offers a new delight. Lang Lang's performances, alone and with orchestra and others, are brilliant. A must-have. --Robert Levine Review A prodigiously gifted artist. -- Gramophone Magazine I hear in Lang Lang the voice of a poet. -- The New York Times About the Artist Lang Lang began piano lessons at the age of three with Professor Zhu Ya-Fen. At the age of five he won the Shenyang Piano Competition and played his first public recital. He entered Beijing's Central Music Conservatory when he was nine, studying under Professor Zhao Ping-Guo. At the age of 11, he won the first prize and award for outstanding artistic performance at the Fourth International Young Pianists Competition in Germany. In 1995 at 13 years of age, he played the Op. 10 and Op. 25 Chopin Etudes, at Beijing Concert Hall and won first prize at the Tchaikovsky International Young Musicians' Competition in Japan, where he performed the Chopin Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra in a concert broadcast by NHK Television. At 14 he was a featured soloist at the China National Symphony's inaugural concert, broadcast by CCTV and attended by President Jiang Zemin. The following year he began studies with Gary Graffman at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. Lang Lang's breakthrough came in 1999, when he was 17, with his dramatic last-minute substitution (introduced by Isaac Stern) for an indisposed André Watts at the Ravinia Festival's "Gala of the Century", in which he played Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (conducted by Christoph Eschenbach). The Chicago Tribune called him the biggest, most exciting keyboard talent encountered in many years. In 2001 he made his sold-out Carnegie Hall debut with Yuri Temirkanov, travelled to Beijing with the Philadelphia Orchestra on a tour celebrating its 100th anniversary, during which he performed to an audience of 8,000 at the Great Hall of the People, and made an acclaimed BBC Proms debut, prompting The Times of London's critic to write: "Lang Lang took a sold-out Royal Albert Hall by storm... This could well be history in the making." In 2003, he returned to the BBC Proms for the First Night concert with Leonard Slatkin. After his recent recital debut in the Berlin Philharmonic, the Berliner Zeitung wrote: "Lang Lang is a superb musical performer whose artistic touch is always in service of the music." However, Lang Lang's performances have also been heavily criticized. His performance style has been referred to as having "soggy rhythms and heavy phrasing" and as being "truly boring', "just bad" and "unendurable." Critics who feel that his playing lacks sensitivity have given him the nickname "Bang Bang" [1] [2]. Lang Lang has performed with many of the major orchestras of the world, including the Boston Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Berlin Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony, Israel Philharmonic, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra. He has collaborated with conductors including Daniel Barenboim, Charles Dutoit, Christoph Eschenbach, Valery Gergiev, Mariss Jansons, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Simon Rattle, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Yuri Temirkanov, Michael Tilson Thomas, Manfred Honeck and Franz Welser-Möst. Lang Lang is a Steinway artist who records exclusively for Deutsche Grammophon.
ASIN: B000KF0NLQ
VSKU: DBV.B000KF0NLQ.A
Condition: Acceptable
Author/Artist:Lang Lang
Binding: Audio cd
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Condition Notes: Individually inspected: Guaranteed to play perfectly or your money back. Case will show wear, and may be in library packaging. Ships fast!