Defending Lang Lang

I didn't hear the recital, obviously, but that review drew some awfully broad conclusions about the soloist's personality and outlook on his newfound celebrity. Unless Tommasini interviewed him before the recital, I'm not buying a word of it. Lang Lang opened our season this year, and I thought he was fantastic. Is he showy? Over-the-top? Perhaps even a bit too into his own head? Sure. He's also, what, 21? I'd hate for my whole career to be summed up in the nation's newspaper by one writer's view of the way I played a single recital when I was 21. But I guess, by NY Times standards, that's old enough to expect perfection.

I don't mind when reviewers offer a bit of backlash against artists who have clearly been overhyped, and Lang Lang might fall into that category. But to make some of the assumptions of personality that Tommasini did is unprofessional in my book.

Scroll down to the Lang Lang photo to see what this is all about. I'll add (without taking any stand on Lang Lang or Tommasini) that critics sometimes get defensive about the integrity of classical music, so that performances they don't like -- especially very populist performances -- seem not just disagreeable, but attacks on the entire field. You'll see that also in reviews of composers, especially Philip Glass.

This can't be good for classical music. If we're now so threatened that we need to get all holier-than-thou about our hoped-for purity, then we're really in trouble. In past generations, when nobody thought classical music was in trouble, we were allowed to be light and entertaining. Recordings from the early years of this century -- especially of singers -- show people taking far more liberties than Lang Lang ever does. Recently my wife and I got a multi-CD collection of recordings by Sam's own Minnesota Orchestra, dating from the 1920s to the present. I listened to the first CD; it's almost all bonbons, light music, pure entertainment. But I'm sure nobody back then thought the orchestra was doing anything disgraceful.