Lang Lang: Dragon Songs Plus

Description

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