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Stories   >   Opening night at Carnegie Hall with Dudamel, Lang Lang and the LA Phil. Moving, unexpected and virtuosic / FINANCIAL TIMES

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Opening night at Carnegie Hall with Dudamel, Lang Lang and the LA Phil. Moving, unexpected and virtuosic / FINANCIAL TIMES

Posted: October 17, 2024

Opening night at Carnegie Hall found novelty in familiar fare through the musical intelligence of two classical superstars

FINANCIAL TIMES - Clemency Burton-Hill writes…On paper, Carnegie Hall’s opening night programme seemed almost too good to be true: Lang Lang and the Los Angeles Philharmonic playing Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No.2 under Gustavo Dudamel.
 

Still, some might bemoan the fact these superstars had chosen such predictable fare. What about emerging artists, forgotten composers, contemporary powerhouses? For them there was Alberto Ginastera’s rarely performed Estancia, which seemed intriguing enough, especially in this arrangement. There was also the rich, lyrical baritone of Gustavo Castillo, who — like Dudamel — spent his early musical life in El Sistema, the Venezuelan education scheme. (The concert also doubled as the opening of Carnegie Hall’s ambitious, season-wide festival Nuestros sonidos, which celebrates Latin culture in the US.)
 

Yet from the opening bars of the Rachmaninov, there was something new, as unexpected as it was profound. The 43-year-old Dudamel’s famous curls are mostly grey these days, and 42-year-old Lang Lang paused between movements to stretch, but both have matured in other ways too.
 

Conductor and soloist made brave and sometimes shattering tempi choices. Lang Lang’s trademark fondness for breakneck speeds was still there at times, but there was also an aching tenderness when he slowed down between the vertiginous runs and the fireworks. There was fine musical intelligence, too, and a yearning to communicate with humility; no pretentiousness or mask. Lang Lang has always been a virtuoso performer, but rarely a moving one. One wonders if this turnaround is down to Dudamel’s influence. Meanwhile, the orchestra’s playing was potent, urgent and uplifting.
 

One quibble was the peculiar order of the (interval-less) programme. After the astonishing Rachmaninov, Lang Lang chose as an encore the Romance sans paroles, a lyrical, intimate vignette from Charlotte Sohy’s Quatre Pièces romantiques. So far, so good. But then came an awkward interlude while the piano was moved and the stage was reset for the appearance of Castillo. Ginastera’s evocative, Copland-inflected, 1941 ballet Estancia was an exceedingly odd follow-up to the Rachmaninov, try as the musicians valiantly might.
 

Still, as the Argentine writer José Hernández puts it in his verse, “Man kept awake/by an extraordinary pain/consoles himself with a song.” And what consolation this concert was.


PHOTO: © Chris Lee

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