Chaikovsky Lang

The collection of Lang Lang’s Complete Recordings brings together the treasure-trove of recordings that present all the many facets of the pianist’s first decade as a recording artist from 2000–2009. The set also includes his solo and concerto debut albums on the Telarc label.

The collection of Lang Lang’s Complete Recordings brings together the treasure-trove of recordings that present all the many facets of the pianist’s first decade as a recording artist from 2000–2009. The set also includes his solo and concerto debut albums on the Telarc label.

As one-third of the composer-collective Bang on a Can, David Lang is something of a genial father figure of the indie-classical scene. Talk to any of the world's main players and you're likely to hear them tell you about their life-changing stint in Bang on a Can's summer festival, which has acted as a sort of feeder school and incubator for the group's try-anything mentality. Lang's music has undergone many stylistic shifts over the years: In the 80s, he wrote bristlier stuff, but in the last decade or so, he's shifted quietly into a more pensive register. The Little Match Girl Passion, his 2008 work that won him a Pulitzer, was written for only four voices and some hand bells. This Was Written By Hand, his most recent recording, is a collection of short solo piano works played by the British pianist Andrew Zolinsky. The album holds the same, sustained melancholy mood: thoughtful, searching, elegiac, minimalist. Lang's way with repetitive phrasing doesn't feel like that of minimalists like Glass or Reich's, though.

On 2003's Long Time Coming, Jonny Lang made the first turn from his rap as an itinerant blues-rocker to being a spiritually inspired rock and pop songwriter. Producer Marti Frederiksen took Lang's tunes and glossed them to the breaking point, leaving the album an unfocused gobbledygook set of songs that had no center. Three years later, Lang returns with Turn Around. And the title does not refer to him turning back to his blues guitar slinger roots. Instead, the title refers to the biblical term that is the definition of the word "repent." (No mistake.) Lang's overt spirituality comes ringing through the mix created by Drew Ramsey Lang and Shannon Sanders. Turn Around is funkier, dressed in contemporary gospel, gritty rock and yes, the blues. Lang's still got a way to go as a songwriter, but the material here is infinitely better than it was on his last outing.

Ideally, a piano trio should be balanced in its voices and the parts more or less equally matched in expression, but it sometimes happens in late Romantic chamber music that an overwrought piano part can create the opposite conditions. In the Trio élégiaque No. 1 in G minor by Sergey Rachmaninov and the Piano Trio in A minor by Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky, the piano is clearly the dominant force, because it carries most of the thematic material, harmonic textures, and dramatic gestures, and thereby reduces the violin and cello to subsidiary roles.

Jonny Lang cut his debut album in Memphis when he was just 15, and, upon its release in 1996, the guitar prodigy from Minneapolis instantly became one of the leading lights of modern blues. He's a fast and flashy player whose approach rests equally on technical assurance and musical intelligence. Sizing up a dozen songs, he gets a pleasing, razor-sharp sound out of his ax while building excitement in his lead lines–thankfully, he steers clear of cliché and bombast. As a fledging singer, he acts out the lyrics of Ike Turner's age-old shuffle "Matchbox" and his own romantic ballad "Missing Your Love" with surprising poise and believability. Kudos to producer David Z for surrounding Lang with alert, first-rate sidemen and for helping select good material from Turner, Sonny Boy Williamson, Tinsley Ellis, and others.

When reviewers heard teen-aged Jonny Lang's debut album of 1997, Lie to Me, many of them commented on how mature the blues singer/guitarist sounded for his age. Similarly, Lang's second album, Wander This World, often sounds like it could have been the work of a man of 30. With David Z. (known for his work with Prince) producing, the Midwesterner delivers an exciting sophomore effort that has as much to do with soul, funk, and rock as it does with actual blues. Far from a purist, Lang takes an approach that is best described as Albert Collins, B.B. King, and Luther Allison by way of Otis Redding, Stax Records, and Eric Clapton. While "Angel of Mercy" and the moody "Cherry Red Wine" demonstrate his mastery of the 12-bar format, most of the other selections aren't actual 12-bar blues, but rather Southern-style soul, funk, or rock with a wealth of blues feeling. Lovers of 1960s Memphis soul should appreciate "Walking Away" and "Second Guessing," while "The Levee" and "Still Rainin'" have more of a rock orientation.