by Kevin McLaughlin
This article was originally published on Cleveland.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Lang Lang returned to Severance Music Center on Saturday, September 12 to open the fourth season of The Cleveland Orchestra’s Recital Series, two years after playing Saint-Saëns’s Second Piano Concerto with the Orchestra. This time he had Mandel Concert Hall all to himself, with a program of Mozart, Beethoven, Albéniz, Granados, and Liszt.
At 44, the pianist has lost little of his boyish exuberance. He can still amaze with bursts of extraordinary velocity and smile while doing it. But some of the evening’s best playing came when virtuosity meant something quieter and more reflective. The program itself encouraged such contrast, moving from early Mozart and late-Beethoven introspection toward Spanish color and Lisztian display.
Mozart’s Rondo in D, K. 485 began quietly but soon turned crisp and bright, with crystalline turns and feints. There was wit in his phrasing and enough restraint to keep Mozart in his own century. Restraint was not so much the point in Beethoven’s Sonata No. 8, “Pathétique” where Lang Lang gave the opening Grave jarring force before tearing into the Allegro at top speed. The Adagio cantabile sang broadly, and the finale restored the nervous energy of the first movement.
Lang Lang treated Sonata No. 31, solemnly, but never let reverence narrow its expressive range. The opening movement was warm without languor, and the scherzo brought a sudden roughness. In the finale, recitative, lament, and fugue all grew from one another. Quiet passages remained inward and moments of force arrived freely. The fugue’s bass-octave entrance was thunderous.
After intermission, Lang Lang sounded immediately at home in the Spanish repertory. Six pieces from Albéniz’s Suite española combined rhythmic lift with singing lines. “Granada” unfolded generously, and he played “Asturias” with propulsion without becoming too percussive. Throughout the set, melody remained paramount — a singing quality governed even the most vigorous passages. Granados’s “Quejas, o la Maja y el Ruiseñor” from Goyescas brought out some of the best playing of the night. He sounded absorbed in the piece, shaping a smooth melodic line before dispatching the nightingale’s trills with extraordinary delicacy.
Lang Lang is also a pianist you can enjoy watching. One hand often conducted the other, tracing a phrase in the air or even pointing toward a note before the playing hand landed there.
The two Liszt pieces offered opposite kinds of virtuosity. In Consolation No. 2, Lang Lang floated the melody over its accompaniment with extraordinary control, producing a seamless legato that came as much from the fingers as from the pedal. Here virtuosity was a matter of touch, balance, and patience. Then the Tarantella from Venezia e Napoli threw off all such constraints. Lang Lang tore into the faster passages, hurtling over Liszt’s difficulties and surviving them with unsettling ease.
Two encores followed the Tarantella: A perfectly placed “Clair de lune” by Claude Debussy and Justin Hurwitz’s “Mia & Sebastian’s Theme” from La La Land arranged by Randy Kerber.
Published on ClevelandClassical.com, September 21, 2026
Click here for a printable copy of this article
