CD: Lang Lang: Dragon Songs

DVD: The Painted Veil (2006)

I admit it: I've been avoiding Lang Lang, the young Chinese pianist who of late is seemingly ubiquitous in both the concert hall and in new CD releases. When it comes to piano recordings, give me your Argerich, your Schiff, your Andsnes, and perhaps sooner or later I'll get around to the kids.

Well, Lang Lang was waiting for me anyway, albeit in disguise. After putting it off for months, I finally got to see the recent film adaptation of Somerset Maugham's The Painted Veil, recently released on DVD. Along with stunning cinematography of the Chinese countryside, the film also boasts an evocative and haunting score by Alexandre Desplat.

Just guess who was recruited to play the piano solos.

So whether I had planned on it or not, I was going to hear Lang Lang, and hear Lang Lang I did, in Desplat's compositions and in a familiar piece by Satie included in the film's soundtrack.

The soundtrack performances, though not of actual Chinese compositions, sparked my curiosity about Lang Lang's recent Dragon Songs project, a combination of audio CD and DVD concert video/documentary devoted to works of Chinese classical music.

I found it an exhilarating experience. Lang Lang here plays transcriptions of traditional Chinese pieces and works by modern composers, including a piano concerto adapted from Xian Xinghai's famous Yellow River Cantata.

The music itself is wholly accessible to the Western listener, composed in the romantic, nationalist, and impressionist traditions. There are joyous and energetic dances, on the one hand, and evocations of nature and rural tranquility on the other. If you enjoy folk music or the dreamy, meditative works of French composers such as Debussy, here is a disc you ought to explore.

The piano concerto is a virile work. Listen for the patriotic rallying cry contained within it, and bear in mind that the original cantata dates to the Second Sino-Japanese War. It's a powerful piece of music.

The accompanying DVD reflects both Lang Lang's heritage and career, and includes concert footage -- quite a tribute to a youthful career. You can, of course, enjoy the music twice: once on the CD and in concert on the DVD.

And what of The Painted Veil?

The film is less a visit into the heart of Chinese culture than it is a character study in which the nation of China plays a pivotal role. An estranged couple, Walter and Kitty Fane, journey to a remote town in China, where Walter, a bacteriologist, intends to help combat a cholera epidemic. It's difficult to say which tensions facing the couple are more unbearable: the community's deadly combination of political unrest with the outbreak of disease, or the dire state of the Fanes' marriage. Walter, you see, has forcibly extracted Kitty from an adulterous affair back in the city and almost spitefully placed her in an isolated and dangerous place.

The leads -- Maryland's own Edward Norton and Australian actress Naomi Watts, both playing English colonials -- are wonderful, particularly Watts, who captures her character's obvious flaws and untapped virtues without apology or artifice. The Broadway actor Liev Schreiber (What a voice!) rounds out the triangle as Kitty's charming and amoral lover.

Toby Jones, playing a cynical British commissioner who befriends the Fanes, somehow manages to steal scenes from Norton and Watts. I don't know how he does it either.

Aside from a few pivotal roles -- for example, Anthony Wong Chau-Sang as a shrewd military officer -- our Asian cast is very nearly reduced to ciphers and stereotypes: desperately poor peasants, adorable orphans, flinty housekeepers and the like. It doesn't help matters much that we are forced to watch as the white colonials are borne aloft in sedan chairs.

But the discomfort is well earned this time out, for this is a story of clashes within a culture, of struggles inside the human soul and within a marriage. I am particularly haunted by a soliloquy delivered by Diana Rigg (playing a mother superior who befriends Kitty) comparing her relationship with God to a long-term marriage -- a surprisingly unsettling and ambiguous moment, and about as far from the stereotypes as can be imagined.