Not to be confused with the artist's Live in Vienna release, The Vienna Album is a compilation of material from a quartet of albums from between 2001 and 2007, one of them originally on the Telarc label. It's absolutely worth your time and money. China's superstar Lang Lang is a pianist who harks back to the age of the great virtuosi for whom, as often as not, Mozart and Haydn were curtain raisers that you played before you got to the good, keyboard-pounding stuff. The Viennese trio of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven are not ...
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Not to be confused with the artist's Live in Vienna release, The Vienna Album is a compilation of material from a quartet of albums from between 2001 and 2007, one of them originally on the Telarc label. It's absolutely worth your time and money. China's superstar Lang Lang is a pianist who harks back to the age of the great virtuosi for whom, as often as not, Mozart and Haydn were curtain raisers that you played before you got to the good, keyboard-pounding stuff. The Viennese trio of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven are not really his specialty, but one thing that distinguishes a great artist is the ability to stand out where you might not expect. And so it is here. Lang Lang achieves marvelous results in the restrained Mozart-Haydn dimensions. The opening gesture of the Haydn Piano Sonata in C major, Hob. 16/50, is stretched slightly so as to bring out its abrupt quality. The Mozart slow movements are hypnotically balanced and magical. In the first movement of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1 in C...
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