Lang Lang, piano

>>>More about Lang Lang's performance

Celebrated in all the music capitals of the world, 24-year-old LANG LANG has demonstrated an extraordinary level of musicianship in the widest range of repertoire.  His artistry and ability to connect with audiences on a personal level has established him as an international sensation and one of the most exciting and sought after artists of our time.  He plays sold-out recitals in all the major halls of the world.  He is the first Chinese pianist to be engaged by the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic and the top American orchestras.  Lang Lang's talent is matched by his ebullient personality, making him an ideal ambassador for classical music and a role model for young people.  He was recently recognized for his efforts by the United Nations' Children's Fund (UNICEF) who appointed him their youngest international Goodwill Ambassador.  At the invitation of President George H.W. Bush, he performed a recital in Houston, Texas, to benefit the Bush/Clinton Tsunami Fund.  He also played a recital in Brussels to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the European Union.  He has performed for President George W. Bush, Laura Bush and their invited guests at the White House, and he was invited by President Horst Köhler of Germany to play a recital for President Hu Jin-Tao of China in the Berlin Parliament.  This summer, he performed in Shanghai for President Hu Jin-Tao of China, President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Abdul Kalam of India.

Lang Lang begins the 2006-07 season with opening night gala performances for the Detroit Symphony, Seattle Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra.  He will be heard with orchestras including the Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Houston Symphony, Montreal Symphony, Czech Philharmonic, Warsaw Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Gulbenkian Orchestra.  He participates in a residency with the Bavarian Radio Symphony, tours with the Israel Philharmonic and tours with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and Daniel Barenboim, including a concert in Carnegie Hall.  In the spring, Lang Lang appears with the Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle at the Salzburg Easter Festival.  He performs in London with the London Symphony Orchestra and then tours with the LSO in Asia and Spain.  He will give the world premiere of Jennifer Higdon's Piano Concerto with the National Symphony and Leonard Slatkin.  Lang Lang will be heard in recital in the main concert halls of major cities all over the world, including a tour of Japan and performances in San Francisco's Davies Symphony Hall and Boston's Symphony Hall.

Lang Lang has been seen by millions of television viewers throughout the world.  This past June, he performed in the "3 Orchester und Stars" concert in Munich's Olympic Stadium with three orchestras and Placido Domingo prior to the FIFA Football World Cup.  Lang Lang performed "The Concert for Europe" with the Vienna Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta at Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, which was attended by 100,000 people and was broadcast internationally on television.  Recent performances broadcast by CCTV include The Yellow River Concerto where he was accompanied by one hundred pianists and four orchestras in Guangzhou Stadium in China and his performance of Schubert's Marche Militaire where he was accompanied by 300 pianists in his home city's Shenyang Stadium.  His 2004 performance with Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic at the Waldbühne was attended by over 20,000 people and was also seen by an international television audience.  He has appeared with Gergiev and the Kirov Orchestra in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory in a performance that was broadcast by Russian National Television.  CNN has featured Lang Lang internationally on three programs: NewsNight with Aaron Brown, CNN Sunday Morning with Kyra Phillips, and Inside Asia.  Lang Lang has made television appearances on Sesame Street, ABC's Good Morning America, PBS' Live from Lincoln Center, CBS's Sunday Morning, The Early Show and 60 Minutes and twice on NBC's Tonight Show with Jay Leno. He has been featured in documentaries by BBC Television, ZDF and ARD (Germany), Phoenix (China), TV 5 and Arte (France), RAI (Italy), and NHK (Japan), KBS (Korea), TVE (Spain), ORF (Austria), and Swiss TV.  He has also been featured in The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Teen People's issue highlighting the "Top Twenty Teens Who Will Change the World", People Magazine's "Best of 2003" issue, Time Magazine and Entertainment Weekly.  He is featured in Esquire Magazine's "Best and Brightest" December 2005 issue, and he was recently named one of the top Chinese young celebrities from internet voters.

Born in 1982 in Shenyang, he began piano lessons at the age of three with Professor Zhu Ya-Fen. At the age of five he won the Shenyang Piano Competition and played his first public recital.  He entered Beijing's Central Music Conservatory when he was nine, studying with Professor Zhao Ping-Guo.  At the age of 11, he won the first prize and award for outstanding artistic performance at the Fourth International Young Pianists Competition in Germany.  In 1995 at 13 years of age, he played the complete Chopin 24 Etudes at Beijing Concert Hall and won first prize at the Tchaikovsky International Young Musicians' Competition in Japan, where he performed the Chopin Concerto No. 2 with the Moscow Philharmonic in a concert broadcast by NHK Television.  At 14 he was a featured soloist at the China National Symphony's inaugural concert, broadcast by CCTV and attended by President Jiang Ze-Min.  The following year he began studies with Gary Graffman at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, from which he graduated in 2003.

An extraordinary breakthrough came in 1999, when he was 17, with his dramatic last-minute substitution (introduced by Isaac Stern) for an indisposed André Watts at the Ravinia Festival's "Gala of the Century", playing the Tchaikovsky Concerto with the Chicago Symphony and Christoph Eschenbach.  Hailed by the Chicago Tribune as the biggest, most exciting keyboard talent encountered in many years, he has since then progressed from one triumphant appearance to the next.  In 2001 alone he made his sold-out Carnegie Hall debut with Yuri Temirkanov, which the New York Times called "stunning", travelled 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, and made a wildly acclaimed BBC Proms debut, prompting The Times of London's critic to write: "Lang Lang took a sold-out 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 in the Berlin Philharmonie, the Berliner Zeitung wrote "Lang Lang is a superb musical performer whose artistic touch is always in service of the music."  His schedule of frequent visits to Asia includes concerts with the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra in China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan.  He also performed New Year's concerts (2005) with the China Philharmonic in Beijing and in Shanghai for the opening of the Oriental Arts Center in Pudong.

The subject of a best-selling biography in China, Lang Lang has received numerous awards.  As a Steinway artist, he received the first-ever Gold Medallion on the occasion of the company's 150th anniversary.  In the summer of 2002, he became the first recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Award at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, in recognition of his distinguished musical talent.  More recently Lang Lang, a resident of Philadelphia, won the 2004 Pennsylvania Governor's Artist of the Year Award.  Lang Lang is a worldwide ambassador for Rolex and Audi.

Lang Lang records exclusively for Universal/Deutsche Grammophon.  His upcoming DG release "Dragon Songs" will include a CD of all-Chinese music and a companion DVD featuring documentary footage and performances from Lang Lang's recent major concert tour in China.  His most recent DG recording "Memory", including works by Mozart, Chopin and Schumann,  reached #1 on the Billboard Classical Chart.  The previous DG recording, released in early 2005, features Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 and Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with Valery Gergiev conducting the Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre.  His first DG album featured the Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn First Piano Concertos, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Daniel Barenboim, and earned him the 2004 "Musician of the Year" Echo Klassik Award in the Instrumental/Piano category and was on the Billboard charts for over 50 weeks.  His next album, which was released in March 2004 and appeared immediately on the German pop charts, is a live recording of his Carnegie recital debut, which included a performance of Chinese traditional music with his father Guo-ren Lang on the er-hu and the world-premiere recording of Tan Dun's Eight Memories in Watercolor.  This recording won the 2005 Amadeus Austrian Music Award and a DVD of this recital with documentary footage won the 2005 "Music DVD of the Year" Echo Klassik Award.  Lang Lang has also made two live recordings with Telarc Records: a recital from Tanglewood's Ozawa Hall and Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic and Temirkanov from the London Proms at Royal Albert Hall.  Further information on Lang Lang can be found at http://www.langlang.com/.   

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