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Panufnik, Bacewicz, and Chopin:  Gerard Schwarz, cond., Lang Lang, piano, Seattle Symphony, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 14.10.2008 (BJ


There was some fine solo playing to be heard at this one-off “Subscriber Exclusives” concert, but it came from a man not even credited in the program listing.

An all-Polish evening began with the seductively atmospheric Hommage à Chopin by Andrzej Panufnik, a composer still not well enough known to Seattle audiences despite Gerard Schwarz’s vigorous advocacy. Born in Warsaw in 1914, he fled from Communist oppression in 1954 and spent the rest of his life in England, receiving a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth a year before his death in 1991 (in Twickenham, not the program book’s “Wickenham”).

Composed originally in 1949 as a set of gently lyrical vocalises for soprano and piano under the title Suita Polska, Hommage à Chopin is the composer’s 1966 arrangement for flute and strings. It offered Seattle Symphony principal flutist Scott Goff a rewarding vehicle for his pure and solid tone and for some wonderfully supple and sensitive phrasing. I only wish some similar comment could be made about pianist Lang Lang’s performances of two Chopin works that, after Schwarz’s sprightly reading of the neo-classical Concerto for Strings by Graóyna Bacewicz, made up the rest of the program.

When I first heard him in 2001, the now-famous “superstar” struck me as not merely a phenomenal communicator and keyboard wizard but a musician of huge potential. Every subsequent encounter has charted a downward course. More and more, what he communicates is about himself rather than about the music. Two years ago, offering Schumann’s Traümerei as an encore, he inflated that utterly intimate little piece into a grandiose public oration. And this time, in the Andante spianato and Grande polonaise and the Second Piano Concerto, not even the vaunted virtuosity was there to be enjoyed.

Certainly what George Bernard Shaw would have called Lang Lang’s “marksmanship” was in good order: he got around the notes well enough. But virtuosity in my terms comprehends musicianship as well as mere digital athleticism, which means that not only the fluency of note-playing must be considered but also the way the notes sound. On this occasion, the tone the pianist drew from his instrument–now opaquely muted, now clamorous–never once sang.

The trouble with words like “superstar”–a term that ought to be banned from publicists’ use–is that both concert-goers and performers themselves come to believe their implications. In an obvious minority, I felt like a curmudgeon for sitting on my hands while Lang Lang’s many admirers roared and whooped their enthusiasm; they were rewarded with an encore in the shape of Chopin’s E-major Étude, Op. 10 No. 3, decently played, though again without poetry. For me, however, memories of the really great Chopin players in our time–of such musicians as Garrick Ohlssohn, Idil Biret, Santiago Rodriguez, and supremely Ivan Moravec–precluded any such celebration of Lang Lang’s considerable but increasingly misused talent. The real hero of the evening was Mr. Goff.

Bernard Jacobson

A shorter version of this review also appeared in the Seattle Times.


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