Flashy ‘n’ furious vs. focus, finesse

Wednesday night at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, a pianist with fingers of steel wore a Chinese shirt and spectacularly played a big, famous, punishingly difficult Rachmaninoff piano concerto that wowed his audience. Thursday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall, a pianist with fingers of steel wore a Chinese shirt and spectacularly played a big, famous, punishingly difficult Rachmaninoff piano concerto that wowed his audience. On both programs there were also major Tchaikovsky orchestral pieces, impressively performed.

The coincidences didn’t stop there. At OCPAC, the Pacific Symphony was put in the hands of a Polish conductor, Kazimierz Kord, who filled out his program with an excerpt from a 20th century symphony by a popular Polish composer. At Disney, the Los Angeles Philharmonic was put in the hands of an American conductor, Marin Alsop, who filled out her program with a 20th century symphony by a popular American composer.

Yet as musical experiences, the concerts had next to nothing in common. In Orange County, Stephen Hough, a British pianist with a cult following for his tireless examinations of forgotten 19th century composers, played Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto with stunning focus. There were no wasted movements in his concentrated playing -- stiff body, steely hard sound, fast and accurate fingers.

At Disney, Lang Lang, the controversial young Chinese pianist and a new sensation in the classical music world, played Rachmaninoff’s Second Concerto with stunning lack of focus but considerable poetry. He was all unflappable zeal in show-offy passages and dreamily floated off into space when Rachmaninoff got pretty. His body looked made of rubber. The lucent sound he gets from the piano is like bells ringing.

With his penchant for pleasing audiences, Lang Lang has come under considerable critical attack of late. What some found cute and boyish a couple of years ago they now call distracting and cheap in a 21-year-old. Record company and management sharks are said to control his career.

Hough, on the other hand, is a model un-publicity hound. He records not for Lang Lang’s glitzy Deutsche Grammophon but for the British independent label Hyperion. His latest disc, of pretty good sonatas by Beethoven’s contemporary Johann Nepomuk Hummel, appeals to connoisseurs. Lang Lang’s latest release -- a recital at Carnegie Hall -- has become a media event.

But Hough makes his own kind of statement. His minimalist, tight Rachmaninoff was more than a little extreme. His performance, coming in at just under 36 minutes, shaved 10 minutes off a more typical reading. This was playing all about control.

Lang Lang is more traditionally flamboyant. Still, his physical mannerisms are less extreme than were, say, Glenn Gould’s. For that matter, Alsop, who learned a thing or two at Leonard Bernstein’s knee, got more than a little worked up conducting Tchaikovsky’s “Francesca da Rimimi” and Samuel Barber’s First Symphony earlier in the program.

But what proved distressing about Lang Lang on Thursday was how lost he seemed as he attempted to milk Rachmaninoff. His 36-minute performance of the Second was only slightly longer than typical, and it was the dreamy bits that accounted for the extra time. But the Second is a young man’s work, and it is hard to go too far with it. At times, in fact, Lang Lang sounded almost too respectful -- which is what made his ultra-fast or ultra-slow moments appear ostentatious.

I hear in Lang Lang the soul of a poet but see in him a confused young man who has thus far figured out the fastest way to an audience’s heart. Handled by hucksters, unreasonably cooed over by the crowds and cruelly castigated by critics, he needs all of us to back off. More musical mentoring wouldn’t hurt, either.

Unfortunately, Alsop -- who became the principal conductor of Britain’s Bournemouth Symphony last season and is likely to sooner or later become the first woman to head a major American orchestra -- may have had her own agenda on this occasion. She muscled her way through the Tchaikovsky and the Barber, both loud and banal works. The playing was splendid. She, like Lang Lang, knows what works, and I’ve certainly never heard Barber’s hollow 1935 symphony sound better.

Accompanying Lang Lang, Alsop played to his weaknesses and her strengths. She did not hesitate to overpower the soloist when she had her own compelling statements to make about the score. In the slow movement, however, she gave him enough rope to nearly hang himself.

Switching the Los Angeles and Orange County conductors probably would have been a good thing. The no-nonsense but intense Kord was just what Lang Lang needed, while I would have liked someone to challenge Hough’s straight-arrow approach to Rachmaninoff. For Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 (“Pathetique”), Kord went for soul; the performance was deeply felt but not well-played. The less said about the movement from Krzysztof Penderecki’s blandly banal choral Symphony No. 7 (“Gates of Jerusalem”), arranged for string orchestra, the better.

*

Los Angeles Philharmonic

Where: Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., L.A.

When: Today, 8 p.m.

Price: $15-$120

Contact: (323) 850-2000