Chinese pianist Lang Lang is an anomaly in the Classical music world. His ability to connect with a wide audience has garnered him the sort of fame that far outstrips even the biggest stars within a very niche industry. Having burst on the international scene by winning the 1995 International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians in Japan, the 42-year-old pianist has since gone on to collaborate with the world’s greatest orchestras and conductors. He has played at legendary venues like Carnegie Hall, Royal Albert Hall, and Wigmore Hall and with conducting legends such as Daniel Barenboim, Gustavo Dudamel, and Sir Simon Rattle.

All of this would be expected of one of the world’s great piano virtuosos, but from early in his career, Lang Lang has worked with a range of artists and repertoire well outside of elite Classical outfits. His collaborators have included fellow pianist Herbie Hancock, Pharrell Williams, Metallica, dubstep dancer Marquese “Nonstop” Scott, and dancer, actor and activist Lil Buck. In April 2020, he teamed up with Andrea Bocelli, Celine Dion, Lady Gaga, and John Legend for the grand finale performance of The Prayer at the One World: Together at Home concert. Likewise, Lang Lang has produced an eclectic discography. Alongside staples of the piano repertoire like Bach’s Goldberg Variations and the great Rachmaninov, Liszt, and Chopin concertos lie the soundtrack for the video game Gran Turismo 5, Disney tunes, and traditional Chinese music. 

Up until now, however, a corner of the repertoire little explored by Lang Lang has been the diverse array of solo and orchestra-accompanied compositions of the late 19th and early 20th-century French school. His latest album from Deutsche Grammophon entitled Saint-Saëns aims to remedy that gap. It not only includes works by the great, long-living (1835-1921) French composer, organist, conductor, and pianist of the Romantic era, but also, contemporaries like Debussy, Fauré, and Délibes. In addition, Lang Lang includes the lesser-known Louise Farrenc, Charlotte Sohy and Germaine Tailleferre, three women composers who have been undergoing a period of rediscovery for the past decade. 

The double disc’s two cornerstones are Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals (1886) and his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 2 in G minor op. 22 (1868). The former is a unique, humorous 14-movement musical suite written for two pianos, the second pianist on this recording being Lang Lang’s wife, Gina Alice. Most of the 25-minute work’s sections are very short—less than one minute each—and are musically descriptive of the animals they portray: the lion, tortoises, elephants, kangaroos as well as that strangest of creatures…the pianist! 

Saint-Saëns was famously embarrassed about Carnival, viewing it as a sort of populist bonbon that didn’t represent his ambitions as a serious composer. In fact, he refused its publication until after his death. Despite these efforts, Carnival is undoubtedly his most popular work. Its best-known movement is the “Swan”, a slowly moving cello melody evoking the regal bird as it glides over the water. Lang Lang and Gina Alice are accompanied in Saint-Saëns’s bestiary by the world’s oldest civic symphony, Leipzig’s legendary Gewandhaus Orchestra under their Music Director, Andris Nelsons. 

Saint-Saëns wrote five piano concertos, but only the second has managed to gain a toehold in the central concert repertoire. The composer was a noted pianist himself and early recordings show him to be a master of le jeu perlé, a delicate style of playing using only a sparing amount of light pedalling. This manner was ultimately rejected by players of the German and Russian schools who favoured weight and brilliance, with a heavy foot on the pedal.

It is this shift in style and taste that perhaps explains why Saint-Saëns’s No. 2 has prevailed over his other concertos given its more overt drama and showiness. Lang Lang himself likens the work’s opening bars to the sound of a big organ and signals the “big church bells” effects in the third movement. But he also notes how the concerto’s more delicate moments are “like counting the stars” and foreshadow Debussy’s Impressionism.

It is that composer’s “Petite Suite” for Piano 4 Hands that brings together the husband and wife team in a more intimate “piano-only” setting to contrast their work in Carnival. Gina Alice describes the work as “a French watercolour” that demands an extremely light touch. Continuing on in that vein are piano versions of Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte and the “In paradisum” section of Fauré’s Requiem mass (usually sung by a choir) played by Lang Lang.

Without doubt, the rarities on this recording are by women composers like Charlotte Sohy who for so long have been overlooked, or outright dismissed, by the classical music industry. Lang Lang compares Sohy’s “Romance sans paroles” to works by her contemporary male counterparts, Ravel and Debussy, adding that listening to it “you don’t need to come to Paris…you are walking on the street in Paris!” And for Lang Lang’s legion of fans, this new Saint-Saëns disc will no doubt spark interest in an often neglected region of great piano music that offers so much to discover.