Lang Lang goes on 15-city Bach tour of China
mainFrom Global Times:
He will perform two-hour solo concerts without any intermission in each of the 15 Chinese cities including Lang’s hometown, Northeast China’s Shenyang, with help from Poly Theatre Management….
On Monday, China’s cultural authorities eased the anti-COVID19 restrictions in cultural venues like cinemas and theaters across the country, which no longer have to meet the requirements for limited capacity.
“As part of Lang Lang’s Bach: Goldberg Variations global tour, the concerts in China’s will lift people’s spirits and raise hopes for concert halls around the world,” said Guo Wenpeng from Poly Theatre Management.
He should play Myra Hess’ arrangement of “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” as an encore – if he sees the irony that many will quickly tire of his thumped-out Bach
Of course, that most inspiring text is to be printed in the program (in Chinese translation).
Chinese don’t need intermission. We have intermissions all the time: walking in and out, chitchatting and playing our phones.
Not to mention eating, sleeping and passing wind.
Thumbs up for your self-irony.
To be honest, that was the cultural norm for concerts during Mozart’s time….just be grateful they don’t also jeer and throw empty wine bottles onto the stage.
‘sTrue. I would attend Chinese opera in HK, which was very long and presented without intervals, and people would come and go. And they did chit-chat, though not particularly noisily (though by then I was probably used to noise levels in HK, which were the highest I have ever herd anywhere on earth).
But in all the other cultural venues in HK, they were assiduous about requiring audiences to turn off their cell phones — and their watches! — before a performance started, and in those days, it was obeyed. I did not speak sufficient Cantonese to know if that was included in the pre-opera announcements, but there was no interference from them (though people may have called out).
Anyway, people sit through 2-hour movies without budging. What’s the difficulty about a 2-hour concert? Whatever the feeling in these precincts, Lang Lang is sufficiently enjoyed to fill halls all over the world, so I don’t doubt his Chinese audiences will be similarly happy to hear him.
Look, he is what he is. Of course there are loads of better pianists in the world. But he does a lot of good, and he is getting off his keister and getting out on what sounds quite a gruelling tour. I do wish this site would lay off him a bit.
Wonderful news! Let’s open up the world with music ! Bach played by Lang Lang ! The best!
this might be worse than the COVID…. both his playing and the latter are a globalist hoax.
Quite right . He is the worst interpreter of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, but then we should thank him for introducing the Goldberg to the Chinese audiences.
The Chinese are a very patient kind of people so they will appreciate the Goldberg, no doubt.
Indeed-his Goldberg are a shame to music!
No doubt Lang Lang and the Poly Group will earn a fortune at the prices Lang Lang charges in his native land. Art or commerce? I’ll back the latter.
Thank you the Chinese Communist Party! First wreaking havoc with global lives and livelihood with your coverups and lies (Western government incompetence also to blame) and then taking a victory lap with a clownish pianist playing marathon Bach concerts. Musicians all over the world are driving Uber and delivery groceries just to pay for rent. Lift my spirits and raise my hopes indeed! Go f**** yourselves!
I think the western incompetence is much worse…face it, if the virus came from the west, they’d be covering it up too.
Brutal fascist dictatorships such as the CCP cover up bad news to say in power at all cost, something unlikely to happen with open liberal democracies and freedom of the press.
Oh yeah, because Donald Trump was such a great, liberal, democratic leader and wasn’t facist or brutal at all, and always told the truth. The exact same with Boris Johnson. Thank heavens the USA and the UK have and will always be a utopian paradise with no problems whatsoever, and every citizen is content and happy.
(Not.)
I give Ya What 5 cents for such eloquence. Undoubtedly, Ya What must be one of the kapos at one of the CCP’s numerous “vocational training centers” in Xinjiang. I’d prefer the nadir of Donald and Boris to the zenith of Winnie the Pooh Xitler any day.
Now that is funny…because you see, I wouldn’t.
Why thank you – the ahem ‘vocational training centres’ certainly taught me how to write so eloquently, in order to fulfil my ahem dictated prophecy in life, which is to come onto this blog and reply to ahem lovely people like ahem yourself.
(Do excuse me I have a slight cough…not feeling my best at the moment).
Meanwhile, keep up with your daily ritual of worshipping and kissing the life size portraits of Trump and Johnson you’ve probably bought for your bedroom.
(Oh my cough has gone.)
All of that is not true, just fake memes circulating in social media and obscure websites on the internet, and cultivated by ultra-rightwing politicians everywhere. The virus was carefully designed in the barn of a Welsh retired laboratory doctor, and meant to reduce the spreading of ants in his vegetable garden. But because his wife unexpectedly entered the shed with demands concerning the garbage bags, the process was interrupted and some DNA went the wrong way and got onto the postcard he sent the same day to his sister who ran a pizza chain in Wuhan. The rest is history.
Ugh! I would think that Lang Lang would make a horrific Bach player! I can’t imagine sitting through two hours of him playing anything, let alone Bach!
Sadly, most Chinese during the tour will experience their first Bach Goldberg played with “willful indulgence and grotesque artifice” (Anthony Tommasini, NYT). Having heard the recording myself, I totally concur.