Lang Lang

Lang Lang (born 14 June 1982) is a Chinese pianist who has performed with major orchestras around the world and appeared at many leading concert halls.

Lang Lang was born in Shenyang, Liaoning, in 1982 to a family of the Manchu Niohuru clan.

His father Lang Guoren is a musician, playing the erhu.

Both his father and mother, also a musician, were displaced to work on rural rice farms in the country during the Cultural Revolution, before Lang was born.

The Tom and Jerry episode The Cat Concerto, which features Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2., motivated two-year-old Lang to learn the piano.

He started lessons with Zhu Yafen at age three, won first place at the Shenyang Piano Competition and performed his first public recital when he was five.

When Lang was nine, he was expelled from his piano tutor's studio for "lack of talent".

Another music teacher at his state school noticed Lang and asked him to play the second movement of Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 10, which reminded Lang of his love for the instrument.

Lang later studied under Zhao Ping-Guo at Beijing's Central Conservatory of Music.

Active since the 1990s, he was the first Chinese pianist to be engaged by the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic and many of the top American orchestras.

A Chicago Tribune music critic called him "the biggest, most exciting young keyboard talent I have encountered in many a year of attending piano recitals."

Lang is considered one of the most accomplished classical musicians of modern times by the United Nations.

Lang won the Xinghai National Piano Competition in Beijing in 1993 and first prize for outstanding artistic performance at the International Competition for Young Pianists in Ettlingen, Germany, in 1994.

In 1995, Lang played the Chopin études at the Beijing Concert Hall, won the International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians in Japan, and performed as soloist with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra.

Fourteen-year-old Lang was a featured soloist for the China National Symphony's inaugural concert in September 1996, then Chinese president Jiang Zemin met Lang Lang after this performance.

Lang and his father moved to the United States in 1997, so Lang could pursue studies with Gary Graffman at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

Lang has been noted by musicians and critics around the world—the conductor Jahja Ling remarked: "Lang Lang is special because of his total mastery of the piano... He has the flair and great communicative power."

National Public Radio's Morning Edition remarked: "Lang Lang has conquered the classical world with dazzling technique and charisma."

It is often noted that Lang successfully straddles two worlds—classical prodigy and rock-like "superstar", a phenomenon summed up by The Times (London) journalist Emma Pomfret, who wrote, "I can think of no other classical artist who has achieved Lang Lang's broad appeal without dumbing down."

Lang's performance style was controversial when he stormed into the classical music scene in 1999.

At that time, pianist Earl Wild called him "the J. Lo of the piano."

Others have described him as immature, but admitted that his ability to "conquer crowds with youthful bravado" is phenomenal among classical musicians.

His maturity in subsequent years was reported by The New Yorker: "The ebullient Lang Lang is maturing as an artist."

In 2001, after a Carnegie Hall debut with Yuri Temirkanov, he traveled to Beijing with the Philadelphia Orchestra on a tour celebrating its 100th anniversary, during which he performed to an audience of 8,000 at the Great Hall of the People.

The same year, he made his BBC Proms debut, prompting a music critic of the British newspaper The Times to write, "Lang Lang took a sold-out Royal Albert Hall by storm... This could well be history in the making".

In 2003, he returned to the BBC Proms for the First Night concert with Leonard Slatkin.

After his recital debut with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Berliner Zeitung wrote: "Lang Lang is a superb musical performer whose artistic touch is always in service of the music".

In 2004, Lang was featured in Radio Television Hong Kong's TV documentary Outstanding Young Chinese Musicians.However, recent reviews have been mixed.

Lately, a plethora of music critics have protested against too much showmanship; not enough care; not enough sensitivity.

But audiences continue to adore him.

Lang has become one of those artists whose career prospers outside the boundaries of critical approval.

The pianist is bemused by the backlash: "You get many good reviews from the beginning," he says, "and then the critics start criticising you. It's strange. The things they liked you for first—unique, fresh—they say is great. And then later they say you're too fresh, too unique. But they're the same thing!"

Lang was the featured soloist on the Golden Globe-winning score of The Painted Veil and can be heard on the soundtrack of The Banquet.

He has recorded for the Deutsche Grammophon and Telarc labels.

His album of the first and fourth Beethoven piano concertos with the Orchestre de Paris and Christoph Eschenbach debuted at No. 1 on the Traditional Classical Billboard Chart.

In 2008, he was the pianist on Mike Oldfield's 2008 album Music of the Spheres.

In December 2008, Lang partnered with Google and YouTube in the project YouTube Symphony Orchestra.

In April 2009, when Time magazine included Lang in its list of the 100 most influential people, Herbie Hancock described his playing as "so sensitive and so deeply human", commenting: "You hear him play, and he never ceases to touch your heart."

In 2010, he signed with Sony for a reported $3 million.

Metallica performed the song One alongside Lang at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards in 2014.