Recital Lang Lang

For his recital, the Chinese keyboard magician Lang Lang travels to France, to Poland — and into the heart of German Romanticism. The program begins with a tribute to the fin-de-siècle salon culture of Paris, where Gabriel Fauré was the undisputed darling of high society. He charmed his listeners with pieces such as the enchanting Pavane, a marvel of melancholy beauty. Kapellmeister Kreisler, a character invented by the German poet E.T.A. Hoffmann, had more of a penchant for the grotesque. Robert Schumann portrayed this colorful literary figure in his Kreisleriana and in fact considered the eight fantasies comprising the cycle to be his finest work for piano. Schumann had great admiration for his contemporary Frédéric Chopin and marveled at the dances with which Chopin commemorated his Polish homeland during his Parisian exile. Schumann summed up the explosive political power hidden in these miniatures in a famous observation: “Chopin’s works are cannons buried under flowers.” With no fewer than twelve mazurkas and the heroic F-sharp minor Polonaise, Lang Lang evokes the history of the Polish resistance against the Russian occupiers.