Lang Lang, Live in Auckland

Lang Lang

waiting for the theatre to open
We were invited early to the venue to watch Lang Lang give a press conference to
local and Chinese media, and for a rehearsal and prizegiving.

Mercy and 8 other students on stage with Lang Lang on the middle piano, rehearsing Schubert's "March Militarie."

Lang Lang gives Mercy a high-five

Danny's turn for a handshake

Mercy on the bottom right.
The Auckland folks all knew each other already, but they
seemed extraordinarily friendly towards us.

The colors and spotlights changed with every piece.
No filming was allowed during the actual evening performance.  

Joyce, at the Piopio rest stop on the way home.

Danny, Mercy, Joyce and I had three goals in Auckland this weekend:

• renew Joyce's US passport
• get Danny to his ACT exam
• support Mercy in her rehearsals and performances on stage with Lang Lang

Success on all accounts.  The most exciting part, for me, was going to Lang Lang's concert!

Here's a little article I wrote at the request of the Auckland music school that helped organize the competition:

Ten years ago, I saw Leon Fleisher perform in an small concert hall in Texas, USA. The memory is still vivid, and I still tell my students specific stories about that performance, even after all these years.  

Lang Lang’s Auckland performance in Civic Theatre last Sunday will be an equally vivid memory, and one that I will be describing to my students ten years from now.  How fast the time flew by during this solo piano recital!   Lang Lang played with breathtaking technique and equally breathtaking artistry.  Every moment was interpreted.  Not a note was thrown away.  At the piano, Lang Lang was a high-performance athlete; at the same time, he was an actor, a dramatist, a spinner of tales and fantasies and stories, who held the audience as spell-bound as children hearing fairy tales from an expert story teller.  

I attended the concert with 3 of my own children, ages 5-16.  I imagined that they would be tired after the long recital, which would not conclude until hours after their regular bedtimes, and which would probably include literature that was over their heads.  

Indeed, the recital ended late. . . but we didn’t feel tired.  We all came home buzzing.  We lay on the beds in our hotel room, talking in the darkness past midnight about all that we had seen and heard and felt.  

The Sunday recital was the culmination of significant preparation by local New Zealand pianists in anticipation of Lang Lang’s visit.  The New Zealand Youth Piano Competition was one such preparatory event.  Interested students, from ages 6-20, submitted a video of their audition piece to a panel of judges.  Based on these online submissions, a smaller group of finalists was chosen in each of the age groups.  The finalists were invited to perform at a final round of competition which was held in Auckland on Monday, June 6.   Awards were given to the top 3 students in each division, including an invitation to perform on stage with Lang Lang at his Auckland recital.  Student winners and Lang Lang performed Schubert’s famous "March Militaire” duet, 20 hands playing simultaneously on 6 on-stage pianos.  

In addition to the “March Militaire,” Lang Lang’s recital included “The Seasons” by Tchaikovsky, all of Chopin’s scherzi, and several encores.

-Holly Miller Jones, B.M., M.M., NCTM(USA), RMTNZ, classical pianist and teacher living in New Plymouth, Taranaki.  

Books of the week:

We listened to this book on the 5-hour drive up to Auckland to see Lang Lang in person.