"Don’t just play, feel the notes softly come out from your fingers and heart. The main melody comes many times, must be played with different shapes, colors, characters."

Said Lang Lang, quoted in "Lang Lang: The Pianist Who Plays Too Muchly/On a new recording of Bach’s 'Goldberg' Variations, the superstar artist stretches the music beyond taste" (NYT).

Does "beyond taste" turn out to be something positive? The critic, Anthony Tommasini, says "I and many others have long found Mr. Lang’s performances overindulgently expressive and marred by exaggerated interpretive touches."

What does it mean to feel the notes come from your heart?... That approach risks making the music seem mannered, even manipulated.... What does it mean to play expressively? Compare classical music to film. Film buffs recognize overacting in a flash, and won’t put up with it. Mr. Lang, I think, does the equivalent of overacting in music; his expressivity tips over into exaggeration, even vulgarity.

Isn't nearly all pop music the equivalent of overacting? Why would classical music consumers retain a resistance to musical "overacting" when the whole rest of the culture has a taste for exaggeration and thrills. Look at our political discourse, and aren't the actors "overacting" these days? I haven't listened to Lang Lang, but for the purposes of reading Tommasini, I'm going to assume that Lang Lang is a man of our times.

He has won ardent fans for the sheer brilliance and energy of his playing. But many also respond to moments of deep expression, when he sure seems to be doing something to the music, almost always reflected in his physical mannerisms...

Musicians have always engaged us visually with physical mannerisms.

Taste is, of course, a subjective thing. But there is reason to question Mr. Lang’s.... Mr. Lang plays the Romantic repertory with a great deal of freedom, especially rhythmic freedom — what’s known as rubato. Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations certainly invite flexible approaches to rhythm and pacing. But it’s a question of degree, style, taste....

It’s like he’s attempting to show us how deeply he feels the music, to prove that it’s truly coming from his heart. But as a listener I don’t care about his feelings; I care about mine. He has to make this music touch me, not himself.

Tommasini dabbles in the risqué. Why isn't Lang Lang touching himself touching to Tommasini? That's the question I'm pondering at 5:56 in the morning!

AND: Here. You can listen and watch the notes coming softly out of the fingers:



ALSO: I wondered if "muchly" — a word in the NYT headline — is a word in bad taste. I looked it up in the OED and I see that as long ago as 1621 it was used to mean "Much, exceedingly, greatly," and it was in "later use" that it became a word deployed "with conscious humour." In 1922, James Joyce used in it "Ulysses": "Respectable girl meet after mass. Tanks awfully muchly."