One of your funniest, most intelligent and UNbiased reviews EVER. "If death could die this would be death dying" Please tell me that was an ad lib so I can be doubly impressed.

Videos like this are why I watch this channel. Thanks, Dave for honest opinions on music.

I would love to see a photo book of Richter posing like this.

Man, I loved watching this review. If only I could say what so many Juilliard teachers say about this pianist. This review had me in stitches. Thank you!

I went to Lang Lang’s first American concert when he was a teen. What’s happened to him afterward is just sad.

I remember when a CD by Yuja Wang came out, and an American Record Guide critic basically said that after Lang Lang, it was nice to hear a young Asian pianist whom he actually liked, so people could stop accusing him of being a racist because he didn't like Lang Lang.

A french Canadian crtitic called Lang Lang, Bang Bang

The cover artist forgot to put the halo over Lang Lang.

I laughed at 1:21 when you talked about "Everything you can do with the flower". Your British viewers might remember the old comedy movie "Carry On Nurse", which featured Wilfrid Hyde-White's embarrassing encounter with a daffodil...

In a rare moment of self-awareness, Lang Lang pulled the turtleneck over his nose because he couldn't stand the smell

"A swan moving through a worm-hole". Vivid description...^^

That this unmusical, heavy-handed pianist has managed such success still stymies me.

You...are...simply...THE BEST!!!

Finally someone who talks sense, I despair hearing him play, and those that laud him

We didn't even need to listen to it to know it would be revolting.

If you think this is bad, wait until the Blu-ray edition comes out.

The marketing people at DG/Universal who are behind this campaign should be fired immediately. What a discredit to Deutsche G and to Lang Lang, who, at times, is a very good pianist. His manager should be fired, too, by the way.

Maybe the notes were written by chat GPT??😂 Saw Alexandre Kantorow do the Concerto in Amsterdam. One of the best performances of anything I've ever seen. Luckily he recorded it on BIS with his Dad conducting.

Hello Dave, This has got to be the most hilarious, comedic and devastatingly honest review of yours and probably in the entire history of classical music reviews. You could easily give all those stand up comedians a run for their money. Thank you for this video. It made my day.

Dave, You have wonderful taste. London's Royal Academy of Music had Lang Lang give a master class. I had a terrible urge to return my diplomas.

"If death could die this would be that dead". I wish DG would print this review on the release, it would greatly elevate it to a piece of art.

Ok, I had to listen to the Pavane pour une infante defunte after your review. It would make great background music for a schmaltzy restaurant!

Parents need to be warned, kids should not be exposed to this recording!

Hilarious and so much to the point. And the courage it takes to listen to the guy's kitsch performances... Bravo.

This was PRICELESS! 🤣 Thank you! 😊

Great and honest review, Dave. I don't know what DG are trying to achieve with this sickly sugar-coated bilge marketing?

I​ knew​ nothing​ about​ this​ concerto​ so​ I​went​ to​ YTube​ and​ pulled​ out​ a​ live​ version​ by​ Richter.​ What​ magic​al​ playing​ especially​ by​ a​ man​ in​ his​ 70s​ and​ what​ a​ captivating work! Thanks, Dave!

After listening to this recording on streaming service, I start to believe it’s the beginning of the collapse of classic music.

"What does _that_ mean? One hesitates to speculate.." :-))

"If death could die, this could be that dead." His reviews are packed with more genius than the average great composer.

Lang Lang - is a prime example of presentation over substance - I saw him in recital once and left at the interval as I was annoyed by his posing & lack of ability to communicate his vision of the music as a coherent whole. I can stand perverse performance if delivered with conviction and a sense of style.

"If death could die." 😅

'It makes you want to scratch yourself....or take a shower...'😂😂😂...and 'How do you exagerate tedium...that's the question...well, they figured it out..'🤣🤣🤣

Andris' contract with the Boston Symphony has been extended ad infinitum. I shudder at the thought of Bang Bang coming to Boston to play the Saint Saens Second Concerto. Oy vey....

2:50 "Did we really need him to tell us this?" HaHa. No, we did not. Dave, you are on a roll with this video!

I know air guitar but air piano (1:40) is at another level

When this popped up on my screen I though it might be amusing to watch, and I was in the mood for something to make me laugh. I was not disappointed.

I’ve been expecting a review like this, but pleasantly surprised at the expediency! Like Lang Lang, I love discovering Saint-Saëns for myself 😂

This review was stellar! 😂

This is what DGG has become. A glossy two CD set, yet they cannot bring themselves to release the Fabio Luisi Nielsen Concerti on actual CDs!

Nice rant!! Could you at some time talk about the career of Ivo Pogorelich that ranges from the astounding (e.g. Schumann Toccata, Gaspard) to the dreadful (e.g. deconstructed Skrjabin 4th sonata which is somewhere on youtube), combined with an eccentric bellicose personality?

You're so good at what you do, man.

your best most honest critique to date.

Look on the bright side: at least he didn't "discover" Alkan. Even on a French album. That would only have been half obvious. However it is the recording that I dread ever happening "Lang Lang plays Alkan." How bad would Festin be if he can't play a winner like Carnival of the Animals? It's not even amusing to speculate

To my shame I looked some of this up on YT. That's two minutes of my life I won't get back....grim.

Thank you thank you thank you! Lang Lang’s affectations and over-the-top mannerisms must be called out by honest critics like you. The sad thing is how his super-stardom has influenced younger pianists, as well as musicians in general - how they emote with their contorted faces when they’re playing. True musicianship doesn’t need this kind of display (or distractions). And when it comes to musicianship, I’ve always find Lang superficial and “playing-for-effects.”

There's a great early '60s film starring Peter Sellers called "The World of Henry Orient". It centers around two pre-teen girls who are obsessed with a hack concert pianist--played by Peter Sellers, hilariously. (A plus factor is Angela Lansbury playing a slutty older woman; another is Elmer Berstein's score). I have a feeling that Lang Lang is turning into his generation's version of Henry Orient.

please we want more videos like that one

liked and subscribed for being amazingly blunt & truthful & funny!

😂😂 😂😂😂😂.. this guy is the quintessence of kitsch in classical music

I thought DG over-promoted Karajan, but the words they used to describe him were like something from an instruction manual when compared to this.

I so enjoyed your video. You talk with intelligence yet never patronise. I was in tears with laughter. The only problem is - now you made me curious and I want to hear that album. And what do you mean anything British related to food would not be appealing? Haha. Great stuff, thanks for this!

As with many of Dave's reviews, this one prompted me to pull something out of my collection rather than purchase (or not!) for a listen. To wit, I played the Saint-Saens Piano Con. 2 by Rubinstein/Wallenstein/RCA from 1958. How lovely! What fun! Sincerely hope that Lang Lang can pull out of his current nose dive.

This one is a gem - suddenly, I feel at home. What else can I say but, thanks.

Also available on vinyl! I can’t imagine the price.

The first Lang Lang performance I heard was a broadcast of Tchaikovsky's 1st piano concerto from a BBC Prom. I ended up with my mouth open, not in admiration but in disbelief: never had I heard anything so entirely technical and entirely unmusical. Subsequently I made a CD compilation from various other Lang Lang broadcasts to torture a pianist friend of mine. I entitled it "The Dubious Art of Lang Lang".

After watching this, pulled up his Egyptian concerto finale etude on streaming. So many wrong notes! How did he approve that tape?

I love hearing you read through goofy CD booklets. To invoke that one anecdote you mentioned with the Scotsman construction contractor, the writing on them makes my (feeble) attempts at writing feel so...adequate.

Thank you SO much for this. You win "King of the Adjectives" for the year. You nailed everything wrong, from the performance itself to the insipid arrogance of DGG.

'Pavane pour une Infante Defunte' is that rare thing: a title that sounds better in English than in French. In French it sounds like a clapped-out old Renault with a flat tyre.

Are the flowers real in the pictures?

Oh. The hand-stuff 😂

Posing for photos sniffing flowers is a very Asian thing. My mother's Facebook feed is nothing but her sniffing flowers wherever she may travel. 😂

I remember that other guy doing the hand things. That video was hilarious.

They call them Lang Lang's "cast" because he's now sponsored by Disney and these are the "cast members" like Mickey and Pluto and they will encore every Lang Lang CD with a rendition of "It's a Small Small World".

This was hilarious get em Dave 😭😭

"Though the Philistines may jostle, you will rank as an apostle in the high aesthetic band, If you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily in your medieval hand. And everyone will say, as you walk your flowery way, If he's content with a vegetable love which would certainly not suit me, Why, what a most particularly pure young man this pure young man must be!" 😂 Sorry, but the photo irresistibly said Bunthorne to me.

I started to listen to it yesterday and could not take it anymore… I played the piano in the second piano concerto and I was vainly hoping for something interesting.

Enjoying this Dave's Faves series.

When I was a kid, DGG cultivated its image as a classy publisher. I won't say they necessarily were what they tried to seem, but at least they tried. What the Hell happened to them?

But I missed "Hello Friends" - from the opening notes of the review, this was going to be pure magic - it was.

The worst Chopin performance I've ever heard of Chopin's Polonaise in A flat is his.

WOW ! - Out of the PAN and into the Fire :)

Brutal takedown, but honestly very funny. Thx.

"Playing as if lost in traffic". Forgive me but this review at times made me reminiscent of some paroxystic moment of Louis de Funès. 😂

Warning ⚠️ this review carries an 18 rating .

Thanks, Dave. Ive heard Lang Lang a couple times, listened to several recordings and just could never put my finger on why i find his playing less than enthralling. I loved your comments about what is "fed" into students about standard repertoire performance. His Bartok recordings are equally appalling.

What a thorough excoriation of the prime "cast" member!🤣🤣🤣🤣

Domo arregato, Mr. Rhubato. (I know he's not Japanese, but I can'y resist a good pun).

It seems whomever is actually in charge of DG, has managed to drive the bus right over the cliff. Do they actually pay staff members to come up with this stuff? I think "a Swann going through a wormhole" was my favorite thought this week.

Still fairly new to Dave's channel, but was wondering, has he ever been more critical of an album then the evisceration he just gave Lang Lang's Saint-Saens album? Either way I sure did enjoy hearing him trash it.

Ha-ha-ha... Love it!

Dear Dave. It seems you are the only voice of reason in the industry. Even CD booklets are going rapidly downhill. Thank you for all these warnings. It is a shame what a joke once prominent DG has become.

Gosh...I have spent a few dollars for this record....I should first listen to you :))))

I wonder what Gary Graffman, Lang-Lang'sb teacher, things of it.

😂 this was funny!👍

Albrecht Mayer does the same "air oboe" pose in his Venice album (I think). The playing is superb, however. Between him and Andreas Ottensamer, Polygram is really hitched to these marketing gimmicks.

The flower is a bird of paradise. Now analyze that!😂

“There’s the hand stuff, because ya know, he plays the piano which is a ‘hands’ instrument”-that killed me. I’m sick of these albums that are so deeply convinced of their own profundity. What, I wonder, would Karajan think of being called a “cast member”, even a “stellar” one at that?

Found it, on KZfaq: “Yuja Wang ends Lang Lang’s career”.

It seems clear DG is marketing these "discoveries" to young Chinese piano students, most of whom are girls. Hence, the flower, the emphasis on Lang Lang in the balance, the lack of dynamism. Their delicate sensibilities and Lang Lang-obsession require it. That is not me being racist, because I think these girls are underestimated: it's DG being racist, if anything, and condescending. We know he can be better than this, although he has never been a very interesting pianist: In 2013 he recorded a perfectly reasonable Prokofiev 3 and Bartók 2 - Bartók 2! No wonder he left Sony. .

I love your point. Lang Lang is most admirable for his outreach to young listeners in Asia, and he is a flamboyant rep for classical music, and a nice guy by all accounts. But he still would be if he actually played the music with intelligence and taste! He is a gifted pianist and showman of his type,; give us more substance. I agree he may be capable of it. But that would mean real study, and that is something (whatever one thinks of her performances) that his compatriot and fellow Gary Graffman pupil Yuja Wang does, while it seems he does not.

It's very sad to see what has become of Deutsche Grammophon. I guess the only thing going for the Carnival is the absence of the Ogden Nash doggerel.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Lang Lang represents the epitome of treacle-y cliched finger-bangin clunky insults to our ears. nice to know that some people noticed... what the hell is going on with DG?

Next, Lang Lang discovers (drumroll) BACH!!!

"it's as if death could die" 😂

Lang Lang has made me uncomfortable ever since I saw him on TV playing the Second Hungarian Rhapsody as part of an ice skating exhibition. It was the glossiest, most mechanical reading I could imagine, maybe more than was imaginable. I do have to take exception to making fun of La Bagel Delight. There's a restaurant down the street called Szechuan Delight. The "delight" is local and understandable. The "La" is obscure. There was a place on Smith Street next to the F train called F Train Bagels that the MTA sued for copyright infringement. Maybe, since F is La in solfege, La Bagel Delight's lawyers crafted it as a strategy to keep the MTA away. Or not. Try their carrot cake. It rocks.

I remember the days when DG was fairly reliably very good, and boring. Dave, love your videos because you admire greatness, but keep in mind that many of us love takedowns.

I can tolerate the flower-motif only when hallucinating a pedal-release symbol.

Those liner notes were written by an AI hack. Fitting