Lang Lang stuns audience

Chinese pianist Lang Lang, whom many critics have praised as the most famous pianist in the world today, rose to star status playing some of the most difficult repertoire ever written with lightning-quick flourishes up and down the keyboard, crashing chords and flamboyant undulations of his body and arms.

The atmosphere around Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa, where Lang Lang gave the opening night performance Wednesday, seemed to fit that persona.

A blue velvet carpet was rolled out for all of the celebrities in attendance, performers in dragon costumes paraded around the courtyard and a flashy, attention-grabbing statue debuted in the middle of the hall.

The statue, a large, double helix-shaped arrangement of white squares illuminated with bright lights that changed color, was prominently placed in the center of the subdued, cream-colored building just for a single night.

Also, in an unusual move, the center set up a video projector to broadcast Lang Lang’s hand motions.

Yet the Lang Lang who showed up was far more subdued and contemplative than the Lang Lang that gave a breathtaking performance watched by billions of people during the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, or the Lang Lang who has his own line of Adidas shoes.

He started the concert with a quiet, airy, ethereal performance of Schubert’s Sonata in A Major D.959, taking his time with every passage. Meandering through the phrases, he submerged the harmonies in deep pedal and explored the limits of soft playing, splitting what ordinarily would be one dynamic level into many different shades.

The second half of the program was closer to his bread and butter. He plowed right into the Bartók sonata before the audience had stopped clapping, bobbing his head with the fast, pumping rhythm.

Each periodic bass note was struck with gravity and clarity. Feverishly rapid and rhythmically precise repetitions of chords gave the dissonant piece tremendous energy, while the screen projecting the movements of his hands showed the fluttering motions in larger-than-life detail.

The screen was distracting at times, lulling many audience members into a trance as they stared at it, not paying any attention to the fact that the pianist was actually in the room with them.

A series of Debussy preludes followed. Similar to the Schubert, they were quiet and full of rumination.

The most famous of the set, “The Sunken Cathedral,” was mesmerizing and had the audience on the edges of their seats before it was interrupted in the softest part by a cellphone that rang four or five times before it was finally shut off.

A lightning fast playing of Chopin’s “Heroic” Polonaise in which Lang Lang threw his head back bombastically with every repeat of the theme, rapped up regulation time and brought the audience instantly to its feat for the first of a few standing ovations.

He played two encores. The first was a slow, lamenting Chopin Étude. The second was a fast arrangement of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Flight of the Bumblebee,” after which he slammed down the cover of the keyboard as if to say, “I’m done: No more encores for you.”

ALAN BLANK may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or at [email protected].