Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.There is no doubt who was the star of The Piano, the television series in which members of the public are filmed playing pianos at railway stations and emotions have run high as new talents are discovered, heartfelt stories told.When Lang Lang announced last summer that he was leaving the show, his admirers went online to say the programme would never be the same, though it is not as though the high-achieving Chinese pianist can be accused of resting on his laurels.This solo recital at the Barbican is just one stop on an extensive world tour that lasts well into the summer, as he takes the same programme to Spain, south-east Asia and Australia.Lang Lang’s reputation is as a showman, but the programmes that he chooses for his recitals do not bear that out. During the pandemic he focused on Bach’s Goldberg Variations, as weighty a challenge as they come, and this recital tour offers core classics, even if they were sometimes given the showman treatment. The programme started softly, softly, with Fauré’s Pavane, tiptoeing into audibility. This was the piano arrangement of the slow dance usually heard in Fauré’s gentle orchestral version. In Lang Lang’s hands the music shimmered in a hazy glow, though the composer’s own playing of it was said to be quite brisk, not indulgently romantic like this.Back in 2008, the year he played at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, Lang Lang brought to London a performance of Schumann’s Fantasie in C, which tipped over the edge into exaggeration and incoherence. There was something of that again here in Schumann’s Kreisleriana. Here are the two sides of Schumann’s personality — the impulsive Florestan and the dreamy Eusebius — and part of the challenge is to draw detail and expression from Schumann’s intricate piano writing for each. While Lang Lang teases out Eusebius’s inner thoughts nicely, he sees Florestan as an opportunity to play big, loud and fast, racing headlong to the work’s finishing line, as if going for the gold medal in the 100-metre hurdles.A well-contrasted selection of a dozen Chopin Mazurkas after the interval restored a sense of proportion. These are wonderfully subtle pieces, which explore unexpected byways, as if wandering off the main path just to enjoy wherever the trail may lead. Lang Lang was at his best in some of the finest of them, like the pensively mournful Op.33 No.4, where the shifting sands of the harmony suggested the deepest of feelings below.After so much introspection the programme asked for a more extrovert ending. In Chopin’s F sharp minor Polonaise that meant a real rabble-rouser — like being caught in the thick of a battle, all noise and fury, though it is good to know that Lang Lang can still throw off reams of double octaves as fast as anybody. Cheers and two encores followed.★★★☆☆barbican.org.uk
