Lang Lang

I hear so many university professors rip on Lang Lang. It's a near-constant diatribe against him. "Lang Lang is a hack." "Lang Lang is a showman and nothing else." "Lang Lang is as unclassy as pianists come." All of this is true. BUT he's also doing something that no pianist has been able to do in a very long time.

I promised myself that I wouldn't be a music critic. I'm not normally assertive enough to criticize well, but I am very adamant about this. I'll try to keep it brief.

To begin, let me say that I whole-heartedly approve of what Lang Lang is trying to do. He's a young pianist (27 years old) with a very hip appearance. He has done a very good job of bringing classical music to people who normally pay no attention whatsoever to what they would consider to be a very stuffy genre of music. He is a pop culture pianist. He is absolutely a showman. But doesn't he have to be? To draw the average person into the world of classical music, a pianist has to be a bit over-the-top. He has to cancel out the stereotype of "boring classical music." And Lang Lang does a fantastic job of this. Watch him here, here, and here. Is he fun to watch, or is he fun to watch? He's fun to watch, right? I saw him play Chopin's Piano Concerto #2 with the Houston Symphony a while back, and was blown away by how utterly ridiculous he is. And I know that there are better pianists out there. The point here is, though, that most people don't know that there are better pianists out there. However, Lang Lang is opening an unknown world to those people, who then may discover legitimate, respectable pianists--Emanuel Ax, Yefim Bronfman, Andras Schiff, etc., etc. In all honesty, what's the worst that could happen? People see a riveting (if not very classy) performance by a true showman. He won't singlehandedly ruin the world of classical music. I promise.