It's a Chinese painting, a cowherd boy with a flute on a water buffalo. See how it uses empty space to depict. It's a classical technique of traditional Chinese painting.
This is a video recording of Lang Lang's live performance of Don Jon at his Carnegie Hall Recital debut at age 21. This post is a follow up of a previous one - Lang Lang is my favorite Pianist. Hope you enjoy his performance, especially the 2nd half. The following is an introduction of the music:
Réminiscences de Don Juan (S/G418) is an operatic fantasy by Franz Liszt on themes from Don Giovanni by Mozart. Liszt wrote the work in 1841 and published a two-piano version (S/G656) in 1877. The two-piano version is very similar to the original in form.
The work begins with music sung by the Commendatore, from the graveyard scene where he threatens Don Giovanni ("Di rider finirai pria dell aurora! Ribaldo audace! Lascia a' morti la pace!" — Your laughter will not last, even till morning. Remember, that the dead still remember!) and from the finale where he condemns Don Giovanni to hell. The love duet of Don Giovanni and Zerlina follows ("La ci darem la mano"), along with two variations on this theme. An extended fantasy on the champagne aria ("Fin ch'han dal vino") follows, and finally the Commandatore's threat concludes the work.
In contrast to perhaps the majority of opera fantasies composed during the nineteenth century, Liszt's Don Giovanni paraphrase is a much more tightly controlled and significant work. Where the standard opera transcription is merely a joined-up collection of famous tunes,
"The finest of [Liszt's] opera fantasies, however,...are much more than that: they juxtapose different parts of the opera in ways that bring out a new significance, while the original dramatic sense of the individual number and its place within the opera is never out of sight". (Charles Rosen, The Romantic Generation, p. 528)
Réminiscences de Don Juan is extremely technically uncompromising. For this reason, and perhaps too because of its length and dramatic intensity, it does not appear in concert programmes with as much frequency as, say, Liszt's lighter and more popular Rigoletto paraphrase. As Ferruccio Busoni says in the preface to his 1918 edition of the present work, the Réminiscences carries "an almost symbolic significance as the highest point of pianism". (In addition to many pianistic suggestions and some simplifications, Busoni incorporates many passages from the two-piano version into his edition).
While not reaching the almost unachievable heights of difficulty of Liszt's Transcendental Studies (Études d'exécution transcendante), the Don Juan fantasy makes extremely forbidding technical demands, among them hair-raising passages in chromatic thirds, and one instance of rapid leaps in both hands across almost the whole width of the keyboard that, in the words of Heinrich Neuhaus, "with the exception of Ginsburg, probably nobody but the pianola played without smudges".
Alexander Scriabin famously injured his right hand practising this piece and wrote the funeral march of his First Sonata in memory of his damaged hand.
You can see the video sample of the infamous leaps in Ms. Lisitsa's performance at YouTube.
Among all the pianists, young and old, in the world today, Lang Lang (郎朗) is no doubt the most exciting one. He has demonstrated extraordinary talent, personality and musicianship to the classical music world with a large and wide range of repertoire. His technical capability, no matter it's power, tenderness, clarity, tonal nuances, or musical lines, simply stunned many of us. And he is 24 years old!
“Many have wondered whether he might be the greatest concert pianist of his generation. The New York Times has called him “stunning", and praised his “tenderness" and “underlying power", while the San Francisco Chronicle concluded that, “In the face of this young Chinese artist's technical arsenal, there is nothing to do but gape in awestruck amazement." - from CS, Chicago, June 2005
While his music interpretation is highly personal, sometimes controversial, and some western critics can't understand his performance style, no one can deny that Lang Lang is THE technical master, the highest virtuoso in the world today, no wonder some people call him today's Vladimir Horowitz.
Lang Lang was a piano prodigy. He became instantly famous at age 17 when Isaac Stern introduced him to the audiences at the Ravinia Festival's "Gala of the Century", in which he played Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. At 21, he made his memorable sold-out Carnagie Hall Recital debut with a program highly difficult and resembling Vladimir Horowitz's comeback concert at the same music hall. The audiences exploded!
Lang Lang has worked with all major orchestras and conductors of the world，has an extremely busy schedule. He received numerous music awards, is currently a Deutsche Grammophon recording artist, a Steinway artist and an UNICEF goodwill ambassador... too many to list. In case you haven't heard of him, just go to Lang Lang's website, or here is his biography.
Lang Lang has also become an ambassador for Chinese music. He has rearranged a number of Chinese folk songs for piano music and played them beautifully in his most recent album Dragon Songs as well as in his live performances around the world. Here is the prelude of Yellow River Piano Concerto played by Lang Lang with China Philharmonic Orchestra.
Well, another young star pianist of China I like very much is Yundi Li. In fact, China has so many talented young pianists now, too many.
In 1852 Franz Liszt wrote as follows about Chopin: "In his playing the great artist reproduced to enchanting effect the animated, bashful or breathless trembling that overwhelms the heart whenever we believe ourselves close to supernatural beings that we are unable to guess, grasp or hold firm. Like a boat borne on a mighty wave, he allowed the melody to undulate to and fro, or he gave it an unspecified motion, as though some airy phenomenon had unexpectedly entered this tangible and palpable world."
Chopin was Yundi Li's "first love". "He has an incredible sense of form and an unbelievable sensitivity," the pianist says of him. "His works are imbued by a hint of melancholy, even a longing for death. I think that he suffered from great inner turmoil. But sensibility and a romantic vein are qualities that I share. That was already the case in my childhood."
WIDGETIZE