On track: Off to an enchanted land

By WILLIAM DART

It would be difficult to imagine a Kiwi kid dashing off the complete Chopin Etudes at 13; Lang Lang did just that, in concert, in his home town of Beijing. Within a few years, predictably, China simply wasn't big enough.

Moving to the United States, his 2001 debut recital on Telarc was impressive. At the grand old age of 19, he played Haydn, Brahms, Rachmaninov, Balakirev and Tchaikovsky like a veteran. It was a singular programme and heartening to see Tchaikovsky's lovely Dumka in the mainstream repertoire.

Now, on his first CD for Deutsche Grammophon, Lang Lang tackles the Russian composer's most popular concerto.

The sound, it goes without saying, is state of the art, and the pianist approaches this perennial warhorse with all the wide-eyed wonder of youth. And it works. The tempi, as set by Daniel Barenboim and the Chicago Symphony, may tend to the lugubrious, but Lang Lang is still enough of his own man to linger here and there exploring the musical byways of the score.

Lang Lang restores the element of surprise to a piece that many feel they know only too well and we're not talking unpleasant surprises like the blowsy flute solo that opens the second movement, complete with gulps. Bear with this, though, as it passes in eight bars; and then Lang Lang will float you off to his own Land of Enchantment, on a magic carpet of muted strings and wisps of woodwind.

The disc is completed by Mendelssohn's charming First Concerto, which is a less demanding interpretative task. The main thing for the pianist is to be fleet-fingered and never stop sparkling and Lang Lang guards his Mendelssohnian right to do just this, even when the orchestra threatens that sterner times might be just over the page.

This work, written when the composer was 21, has an essential innocence which more seasoned players can override. Even the Andante, with its potentially droopy harmonies, not so far removed from a sentimental parlour song, has an emotional freshness and purity, while the dazzling Finale all but takes the breath away.

* Lang Lang, Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn Piano Concertos (Deutsche Grammophon, 474 291)