Lang Lang is a rock star. At his ambitious La Jolla Music Society recital 26 March 2026 at San Diego’s Jacobs Music Center [California, USA], you could see it in the full, expectant audience of 1,800, in the ovations they showered on him whenever he crossed the stage and even after many of his pauses (once within a movement), and in the regal grace with which he took in stride San Diego’s affection.
In a generous program that balanced pre-Romantic classicism (Mozart, Beethoven) with redolent Spanish and Central European Romanticism (Albéniz, Granados, Liszt), Lang Lang played with easy virtuosity and an instinctive ear for each piece’s dramatic architecture and dynamic potential. Technically, the forty-three-year-old can do whatever he, or anyone else, could imagine or dream of on a keyboard. All night long, he displayed his full arsenal: firmness of tone, clean articulation grounded in finger independence, hand coordination to highlight voices and create harmonic drama, continual deft use of rubato and agogic shaping, athletic velocity and power.
The excitement such a performer produces may have affected Lang Lang’s audience. Enthusiastic and diverse (in appearance and in age), the Jacobs Music Center crowd also felt unsettled – from epidemic-level coughing and intermittent electronic pings and rings to a general restiveness. It seemed a small price to pay to see so many seats filled for a discerningly crafted classical program.
Opening with Mozart’s Rondo in D major (K 485), Lang Lang emphasized the piece’s classical structure and nicely contrasted the sunny right-hand melody with his firm left-hand weight, grounding the piece’s major-key lightness and obviating its melodic debt to J C Bach.
Positioning Beethoven’s eighth (Op 13) and thirty-first (Op 110) sonatas back to back enabled Lang Lang to spotlight the two decades of development and challenge that evolved Beethoven’s genius. He drove through the C minor’s first movement with dramatic if unsubtle extroversion and diminished the last movement with crashing left-hand accents and indistinct runs. Similarly, the A-flat major’s first movement lost some of its cantabile to overly percussive playing.
Lang Lang’s drive seems to be to put the score over as dramatically and powerfully as possible. His playing is thrilling to behold – two screens left and right of the stage projected a keyboard view – and he’s capable of staggering volume.
To this listener he tended to overdramatize or project upon the score, as if distrusting it. What did he most want to communicate in these masterpieces? The answer sometimes seemed to be his own astonishing pianism rather than their emotional content or meaning.
Lang Lang’s slow movements were the happy exception. In the Pathétique‘s Adagio, his tasteful, honest, gently lyrical playing cast a welcome spell. In the A-flat major’s adagio/fugue third movement, his restraint evoked tenderness and built a hushed tension that suggested Beethoven’s titanic will.
After the intermission, six evocative glimpses of Spain from Albéniz’s Suite española (Op 47) and two atmospheric movements from Granados’ Goyescas (Op 11) allowed Lang Lang to channel his unlimited technique into music that showcased his delicacy and expressiveness. Here the music, winningly and affectionately played, charmed.
His virtuosic closing pieces – Liszt’s Consolation No 2 in E major (S 172) and Tarantella (S 162) – made the case that Lang Lang is that first modern virtuoso’s contemporary heir apparent: uniting virtuosity, symphonic pianism, dynamic and coloristic breadth, and theatricality. Lang Lang’s legendary showmanship gestures – the heavenward glance, the flaring fingers, the exploding arm lift – were present but never distracting.
Lang Lang is not everyone’s cup of tea, but his sheer musicality – rhythmic awareness, instinct for a score’s internal drama, charismatically watchable presentation – carry the day more often than not.
With geographic license, Lang Lang’s encore was Justin Hurwitz’s Mia & Sebastian’s Theme from the 2016 Hollywood film La La Land(set in Los Angeles, a city San Diegans view with skepticism). Buffeted on all sides by a standing audience roaring approval, he left the stage as he entered it – the consummate entertainer, a true rock star.