International piano superstar Lang Lang will perform a recital of keyboard masterpieces on Wednesday, March 26, at 7:30 p.m. at Benaroya Hall. The wide-ranging program spans the repertoire, from Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 13 in B-flat major to Enrique Granados’ Goyescas to Six Traditional Chinese Works from Dragon Songs and more.
Though already a prolific pianist in his homeland of China, Lang Lang was first recognized in the West at age 17 when he performed Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 as a substitute for André Watts at the Ravinia Festival. Since then, Lang Lang has performed with all the major symphony orchestras around the world. The New York Times called his 2001 Carnegie Hall debut with Yuri Temirkanov “stunning.” After his BBC Proms debut, London’s The Times wrote “Lang Lang took a sold-out Albert Hall by storm….This could well be history in the making.” He was awarded first prizes at the Fourth International Young Pianists Competition in Germany (1993) and at the Tchaikovsky International Young Musicians’ Competition in Japan (1995); first-ever Gold Medallion as a Steinway artist; first recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Award at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival (2002); and was recently appointed by the United Nations’ Children’s Fund (UNICEF) as their youngest International Goodwill Ambassador. Born in 1982 in Shenyang, China, Lang Lang studied at Beijing’s Central Music Conservatory and with Gary Graffman at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.
The program will begin with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Sonata, K. 333. In all three movements, the composer balances graceful lyricism with moments of Romantic angst born of unexpected chromatic punctuations. Next on the program, Robert Schumann’s Fantasy in C major expresses his deep love for his future wife Clara, née WieckHe composed the work when the two lovers were forced to contend with strenuous opposition from her father, Schumann’s erstwhile piano teacher.
The second half opens with Six Traditional Chinese Works from Dragon Songs, works inspired by and drawn from original folk music that create an Impressionistic and fond reminiscence of the world in which Lang Lang grew up before achieving international fame. Enrique Granados translated his love for the painting and visions of Francisco Goya into his two-part piano suite Goyescas, of which the opening number, Los Requiebros, conveys the mercurial moods and passions of Aragon.
The performance will conclude with two works by Franz Liszt. The pianist and composer was famed for his brilliant piano transcriptions of operatic music, including the passionate Liebestod from Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. In his version, Liszt captured the music’s radiance and passion with stunning faithfulness to the original. Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6 is one of 19 such works composed over several decades. This particular piece incorporates music from several gypsy songs, ingeniously interwoven, conveying both poetic sensitivity and audacious virtuosity in the closing pages. -- www.seattlesymphony.org
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