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Sounds like Sir Simon, who I find is also too fussy?

NYT: Lang Lang: The Pianist Who Plays Too Muchly https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/04/arts/music/lang-lang-bach-goldberg-variations.html

On a new recording of Bach's "Goldberg" Variations, the superstar
artist stretches the music beyond taste.
Lang Lang's seriousness of purpose permeates his recording of Bach's
"Goldberg" Variations. Still, indulgences appear from the first
measures.
Lang Lang's seriousness of purpose permeates his recording of Bach's
"Goldberg" Variations. Still, indulgences appear from the first
measures.Credit...Roman Pilipey/EPA, via Shutterstock
Anthony Tommasini

By Anthony Tommasini

Last year Lang Lang released "Piano Book," an album of pieces that
fostered his childhood passion for the piano: short Chopin works,
folk songs, "Chopsticks." A deluxe edition includes a reprint of the
score for Beethoven's "Für Elise," annotated with Mr. Lang's
handwritten suggestions for student pianists.

Above the opening measure, Mr. Lang writes, "Don't just play, feel
the notes softly come out from your fingers and heart." At the end,
he has a final reminder: "The main melody comes many times, must be
played with different shapes, colors, characters."

These two comments suggest why -- for all his playing's uncanny
virtuosity, wondrous control of shadings and sound and unbridled
urgency -- I and many others have long found Mr. Lang's performances
overindulgently expressive and marred by exaggerated interpretive
touches.

What does it mean to feel the notes come from your heart? How do you
do that? And if a melody in a short piece keeps returning, as in
"Für Elise," why must it be played differently each time? That
approach risks making the music seem mannered, even manipulated. The
comment suggests that it doesn't occur to Mr. Lang that maintaining
the essential contour, flow and character of a wistful melody like
this one might actually enhance the expressive impact of the music.
And for all the soft-spoken beauty of his performance, it comes
across as fussy and affected.

My frustrations with Mr. Lang also apply to his latest recording,
which includes two accounts of Bach's monumental "Goldberg"
Variations. One was made in a studio in Berlin; the other was
recorded live in St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, Germany, where Bach
worked for the last 27 years of his life. I focused on the studio
version, which Mr. Lang said he prefers in a recent interview with
New York Times -- though he added that he likes the spontaneity of
the live performance.

Mr. Lang could play this formidable piece from memory as a teenager,
but waited until this spring, just before turning 38 -- and after
being sidelined for more than a year with a left-arm injury -- to
record it and take it on tour. He wound up playing only three of the
concerts before the coronavirus pandemic canceled the remainder.

For a pianist whose stardom was fueled by dazzling performances of
Romantic concertos, Mr. Lang's venture into Bach's touchstone score
was a risk. There is a large discography of exceptional recordings.
And what constitutes proper Baroque style is hotly debated, even
among specialists.

Mr. Lang's seriousness of purpose permeates his "Goldbergs." Still,
indulgences appear from the first measures of the tranquil opening
Aria, which provides the bass line (and harmonic patterns) from
which Bach generated 30 variations. Mr. Lang takes a restrained
tempo and plays with warm, subdued sound. His execution of clipped
rhythmic figures and embellishments is somewhat pronounced, though
within the bounds of Bachian style.

But Mr. Lang can't resist tugging and pulling at phrases. The result
is that the Aria lacks flow and shape. Moment after moment, Mr. Lang
keeps you hanging, and hanging. This opening section has never
seemed so long.

What does it mean to play expressively? Compare classical music to
film. Film buffs recognize overacting in a flash, and won't put up
with it. Mr. Lang, I think, does the equivalent of overacting in
music; his expressivity tips over into exaggeration, even vulgarity.
He has won ardent fans for the sheer brilliance and energy of his
playing. But many also respond to moments of deep expression, when
he sure seems to be doing something to the music, almost always
reflected in his physical mannerisms.

In classical music, unlike in film, players are often performing
repertory works, like the "Goldberg" Variations, which are familiar
to their audiences. Listeners are judging a performance based on its
differences from others they've heard, not merely in a vacuum. The
key, I'd say, is the proper mixture of bold personality --
difference from the norm -- and subtlety, taste.

Taste is, of course, a subjective thing. But there is reason to
question Mr. Lang's. Yes, a melody can be sung or played with
expressive touches by bending a phrase, prolonging a note, delaying
an entry.

But even music that seems lyrically flowing, with melodic lines that
spin and weave -- like the slow movement of Bach's "Italian"
Concerto, or any Chopin nocturne -- have an underlying structure,
much like the underlying metrical structure of a poem. Even prose
unfolds in clauses, sentences and paragraphs. The risk of stretching
music -- especially to the degree that a sense of pulse becomes weak
-- is that the shape of a phrase, a passage or an entire section
becomes entirely lost in a profusion of expressivity.

Mr. Lang plays the Romantic repertory with a great deal of freedom,
especially rhythmic freedom -- what's known as rubato. Bach's
"Goldberg" Variations certainly invite flexible approaches to rhythm
and pacing. But it's a question of degree, style, taste.

Variation 3, for example, is the first of the periodic contrapuntal
canons in the score, with one line followed a couple of beats later
by its echo. The two lines intertwine gracefully above a steady bass
pattern of eighth notes that soon becomes more animated. Mr. Lang
takes a slow tempo and keeps stretching the mingling lines as they
flow over the bass. But the playing is so yanked around rhythmically
that the music sounds labored. He makes things even fussier by a
constant use of crescendos that swell and subside, like a squeeze
box.

In his 2013 recording, Jeremy Denk approaches the "Goldbergs" intent
on bringing fresh spontaneity to the music. It's certainly a strong
interpretation. In Variation 3, which he plays just a little faster
than Mr. Lang, Mr. Denk is not shy, articulating the bass line with
detached staccato touch and giving lyrical independence to the two
upper lines. Yet the performance is lithe, undulant and cogently
phrased. It's lovely.

On the young pianist Beatrice Rana's splendid 2017 recording, she
takes a quicker tempo, yet plays with beguilingly subdued sound and
just a trace of impishness. Bach structures his variations in two
sections, each one repeated. In Ms. Rana's performance of Variation
3, each section seems like it's emitted in a single breath.

Mr. Lang fares better in the faster, more pulsing variations. But
even in these -- for example the 10th, a bracing four-voice fughetta
-- he can't help himself. On the surface this is bright, crystalline
playing. Yet Mr. Lang seems determined to project each voice with
emphatic clarity. The music winds up feeling confusingly
complicated. The way he punches out accents is almost pummeling. The
four voices come out clearly, but much more naturally, in Ms. Rana's
spirited yet restrained, nuanced performance.

The 26th Variation is a whirlwind of spiraling passagework that
tests a pianist's technique. Not surprisingly, Mr. Lang dispatches
it effortlessly at a breathless tempo. But so does Ms. Rana, who
plays with wondrous lightness and sparkle, yet uncanny poise, which
actually enhances the excitement: You listen in awe, wondering how
she can bring out both qualities at once.

The sublime 25th Variation, a slow, achingly lyrical rumination with
passages that explore bold realms of chromatic harmony, invites a
performer to play with brooding expressivity. But Mr. Lang's
performance is so contorted I find it almost unlistenable. Both Ms.
Rana and Mr. Denk play the music eloquently in seven minutes or
less. Mr. Lang's lugubrious account clocks in at over 10 minutes.

It's like he's attempting to show us how deeply he feels the music,
to prove that it's truly coming from his heart. But as a listener I
don't care about his feelings; I care about mine. He has to make
this music touch me, not himself.

Mr. Lang brought enormous dedication to his "Goldbergs" project. Yet
in an admiring 1940 review of the distinguished pianist Josef
Lhevinne, Virgil Thomson wrote that "any authoritative execution
derives as much of its excellence from what the artist does not do
as from what he does." Mr. Lang surely does too much.

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