★★★★★
For a classical album, this disc sure got a lot of hype. And you know what? The hype was justified. After the dreary efforts of Dudamel on DG with this very orchestra, it's good to see the ensemble back in excellent form. In my Detroit Symphony review of this very same Prokofiev concerto and pianist under Leonard Slatkin, I predicted that this disc would be good, not great. The final analysis proves the result to be the other way around...
- www.classical.net
2013-12-19
★★★★★
Lang Lang's first concerto recording for Sony after a string of successful recital discs features a logical but heretofore unseen coupling, the popular Prokofiev Third and the less commonly heard Bartók Second. Both composers' Thirds have appeared together before, courtesy of Julius Katchen and Martha Argerich, and the Prokofiev Fourth and Bartók First were issued on a 1963 Columbia LP with Rudolf Serkin as pianist...
- www.classical.net
2013-12-19
★★★★★
Do you know that feeling that you get when a choir starts to sing the "Hallelujah" chorus too loud? Or when a budding thespian starts to ramble through their Shakespearean soliloquy too quickly? Misplaced aesthetics, be they well-intentioned or not, can give you a most uneasy twitch. As classical music is handed down from one generation to the next, these particular knacks sometimes get handed down with them. They are stoppable though...
- www.popmatters.com
2013-01-18
★★★★★
What can one say after listening to such mind-boggling and jaw-dropping pianism? Column inches have already been written in their thousands praising the magnificence of the sensation that is Lang Lang so when this CD (and digital download) arrived, I was eager to begin the promised sensational musical journey. It is a joy to report that all the superlatives attributed to Lang Lang are utterly deserved...
- www.classical.net
2010-12-06
★★★★★
The "Rach Three" and the Chinese encore were recorded in front of an audience in Royal Albert Hall at a Proms Concert on August 22, 2001. The Scriabin was recorded on October 20 of that same year at Oberlin College in Ohio under what seem to have been studio conditions. All of these performances are heart-warming, but the live ones particularly so. Lang Lang, a native of mainland China and not yet out of his teens in the summer of 2001, brings maturity beyond his years to this music...
- www.classical.net
2010-08-23
★★★★★
A stone-faced man sits at a piano and solemnly moves his fingers over the keys, while a crowd of similarly leaden, elderly onlookers listens in silence. For many people, this is the mental image that accompanies the mention of a classical piano recital. Even the most ardent fans of the classical repertoire must concede that their cherished music is predominantly high-minded, well-aged and European. Given these stereotypes, the recent success of Lang Lang is all the more astounding...
- www.popmatters.com
2008-08-03