An Evening with Lang Lang

Orchestra of St. Luke’s begins the season with a spirited opening performance of familiar favorites and a reunion with world-renowned pianist Lang Lang. Guest conductor Jahja Ling,  Conductor Laureate of the San Diego Symphony, leads a royal charge with Rossini’s Overture to Semiramide, one of the composer’s final historical dramas.  

Lang Lang takes the stage for Saint-Saëns’ virtuosic second Piano Concerto. A sweeping first movement unfolds into a buoyant allegro scherzando, where piano and orchestra volley snippets of melody back and forth, before whirling to a close in a final, roiling tarantella.  

Lang Lang then brings his famously expressive presence to The Carnival of the Animals, for which he’s joined on piano by the versatile artist Gina Alice Redlinger (who just so happens to be his wife). Recalling the playfulness of his Piano Concerto’s second movement, Saint-Saëns’ well-loved suite blends the sounds and movements of animals with quotes of fellow composers’ most famous works—Offenbach’s Can-Can is slowed to a tortoise’s pace, and a Mendelssohn Scherzo takes on the heavy footprints of an elephant. 

Finally, the orchestra performs Kodály’s Dances of Galánta, inspired by traditional Hungarian military music. A solo clarinet cadenza highlights the talents of Ensemble member Jon Manasse before the piece bursts into four exuberant folk dances.