Click here for article

Click here to watch the video.

Chinese pianist Lang Lang is one of the most recognized and in-demand classical musicians in the world today. His concerts are usually sold out, and his latest one at the National Indoor Stadium in Beijing on Saturday night was no exception.

It's the first concert held at the National Indoor Stadium since the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. After seeing 11 Olympic gold medals awarded last August, the 26-year-old virtuoso put on another golden performance.

Lang Lang opened with Chopin's Piano Concerto, regarded as something of a challenge for pianists. He was accompanied by the Beijing Symphony Orchestra, led by well-known conductor Tan Lihua.

The New Year concert was another step in Lang Lang's plan to welcome more listeners into the world of so-called "serious music". In an exclusive interview with Culture Express, he talked before the concert about one of his resolutions for 2009.

As a young Chinese pianist, Lang Lang has set many firsts, playing at events such as the Beijing Olympics and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, appearing in many world-class concerts around the world, and having People magazine name him as one of the year's sexiest men of 2008.

Click here for article

2008 was a great year for Gil Shaham, for Leila Josefowicz, for Gustavo Dudamel. The NY Phil went to North Korea, Valery Gergiev supported the Russian Army, Leonard Bernstein has had a big revival year in New York.

Click here for article

A perfect weekend would be at home in Beijing, but these are very, very rare. It's rare even for me to be in Beijing as I also have a home in New York and tour a lot. But I like being here best, though I didn't when I was a kid. It was a very closed society then, so suspicious of everything from the West, but it has totally changed. It's as though its mind has been opened.

Click here for article

When Lang Lang says that music is a source of energy for him, he isn't kidding.

Monday was a long day for the 26-year-old Chinese piano superstar. He had landed in San Francisco at 1 a.m. that day, and rolled out of bed to face a grueling schedule of visits to city public schools, punctuated by an intercontinental video press conference for the YouTube Symphony Orchestra project. By dinnertime, fielding questions from a roomful of youngsters at Chinatown's Gordon J. Lau Elementary School, he was visibly fading.

Then Lang sat down to play Beethoven, and he came right back to life. Suddenly there was new vigor in his limbs, a growing intensity in his very presence.

Lang enjoys talking to young musicians, and he does it with an easy, unforced chumminess. But he loves playing music - which is good, since he's been doing it nearly nonstop since he was 2 1/2 years old.

"I've always lived a busy life," he said during an interview in his hotel room the next day. "When I was a kid, I was in school all day and practicing at home. And later, when I began to give concerts, things got even more busy. But it's work that I enjoy."

For many people - including Chinese who look to his rise as a source of national pride - Lang has now become one of the most visible and familiar faces of classical music. His records sell voluminously, his endorsement contracts are numerous and he has a fondness for playing high-profile engagements like the Opening Ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics.

Little wonder, then, that the 150 or so music students at the School of the Arts greeted him Monday morning like a major celebrity - cell phones snapping pictures in unison, questions about his music and his career coming thick and fast.

What pianists first inspired you? Have you ever hit a point where you were fed up with playing the piano? What was it like playing with Herbie Hancock? (Answer: "He rocks!")

One piano student, 17-year-old Shengyuan Zhou of San Francisco, even asked for tips on getting through Liszt's finger-busting "Don Juan Fantasy," which Lang recently recorded - because it's never a bad time for a quick lesson. Lang passed along the same advice he said his teacher gave him on that piece: "I pray for you, good luck."

Lang's weeklong visit to the Bay Area is the first installment in a residency program that the San Francisco Symphony hopes to make an annual affair. They're giving him a workout, too.

In addition to the two school visits on Monday, part of the Symphony's constellation of music education programs, Lang played a solo recital in Davies Symphony Hall on Tuesday night and returns starting tonight to play Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1 with the orchestra under guest conductor Mark Wigglesworth. On Sunday night, he winds up with a chamber program in collaboration with Symphony musicians.

Lang is a pianist of phenomenal technical abilities and still-developing artistic instincts. At its best, his playing is effortlessly sparkling and dramatic, full of showmanship and excitement; at other times, he falls prey to extravagant mannerisms and a fondness for overemphasis.

In conversation, Lang seems to acknowledge that his artistry is still something of a work-in-progress. He's been taken in hand by two brilliant pianist-conductors, Daniel Barenboim and James Levine, whose probing, analytic lessons offer a counterweight to Lang's more instinct-driven approach.

"Barenboim is a real intellectual musician," Lang says, "and he always has great explanations for the reasons he makes certain decisions.

"I'm now past the stage of working with a teacher regularly, but it's still important for me to take someone's advice and combine it with my own thoughts, as well as developing my independent thinking about these works. I also learn from my colleagues by listening to their concerts.

"The good thing about music is that you take an idea and combine it with your idea and get a new idea. That's what keeps people going."

Barenboim has been quoted as calling Lang's talent "unlimited," with all that that implies about the importance of making the right career and repertoire choices. But Lang is wonderfully unruffled by that responsibility.

"It's true that some people have just one thing that they know will fit their talent, and so they do that. But I don't get nervous or worried about making decisions. I just like to prepare well, and then I don't need to worry."

Lang has had rocky patches in his early career. His autobiography, "Journey of a Thousand Miles," details various battles with his strong-willed father, as well as his harsh treatment by an early teacher he has dubbed "Professor Angry," who kicked the 9-year-old Lang out of her studio.

But those disruptive episodes seem to have left few noticeable aftereffects, and in talking with students - something he likes to do often - Lang makes sure to come off as approachable and nonjudgmental. One young piano student, he said, confessed her embarrassment about not being able to tackle the more technically difficult pieces her peers were working on.

"I told her, this doesn't mean you're not a good pianist, it just means you should find pieces you can play well and not be embarrassed.

"When I was a kid, I also admired the high-tech pieces like Rachmaninoff's Third Concerto. But now I understand that it's good if you can play it - but if not, it's not the end of the world. There are many good pianists who don't play stuff like that."

Click here for article

YouTube, one of the most popular and populist media platforms, announced Monday that it is taking its first step toward generating content by launching a symphony orchestra.

The YouTube Symphony Orchestra revolves around two main goals: the creation of a mash-up performance of a symphony from video submissions; and second, a live performance of the same symphony (written for the occasion by composer Tan Dun) at Carnegie Hall on April 15, 2009, with about 150 players selected on the basis of their YouTube video submissions.

In short, YouTube is offering a new twist on the familiar formula of how to get to Carnegie Hall: Practice, practice, upload.

The idea, launched by two YouTube employees at an offsite retreat about a year ago, is being greeted enthusiastically by the classical music world, which Tim Lee, one of the project's initiators, tactfully described as "hungry for innovation."

Classical artists and administrators at the New York news conference Monday visibly basked in the glow of what, in their world, is the equivalent of being noticed by the cool kids at recess. Besides Carnegie Hall, YouTube's partners on the project include Michael Tilson Thomas (who will conduct the Carnegie Hall performance), the London Symphony Orchestra (whose players have already posted 24 master-class videos on the YouTube site) and the pianist Lang Lang.

The pianist, who participated live by video feed from San Francisco, distinguished himself at Monday's news conference by being the only musician present who actually seemed to relate to what YouTube is all about. Lang Lang spoke in practical terms about watching footage of great artists and hearing auditions, rather than resorting to rhetoric about "universal language" and "global outreach."

Interested participants -- who must be older than 14, and not bound by any contractual obligations that would limit the terms of their participation (ruling out most professionals) -- can download the score for "Internet Symphony No. 1: Eroica" at http://YouTube.com/symphony after selecting one of 26 instruments (including a category for "other"). Those who simply wish to participate online can upload their videos of the symphony. Anyone auditioning for the live performance must submit videos of specified excerpts of the standard orchestral repertory by Jan. 28.

Speaking by video feed from London, Tan Dun said his piece attempts to connect "ancient and modern, East and West" with actual quotes ranging from a snippet of Beethoven's "Eroica" to rhythmic footprints of Tchaikovsky to percussion effects that echo the street noise of today's global environment.

That implied collage idea certainly mirrors the phenomenon of YouTube. It remains to be seen, though, whether the spontaneous combustion of the most viral YouTube videos can be replicated or steered through means that are essentially artificial.

Click here for article

The video-sharing website YouTube will take classical music out of pricey concert halls and bring it to the masses by holding an online competition where the public chooses musicians to play at Carnegie Hall.

The competition invites classical musicians around the world to submit two videos demonstrating their musical and technical abilities, YouTube said in a news release on Monday.

Winners from the competition will be flown to New York for a three-day summit with San Francisco Symphony music director Michael Tilson Thomas, Chinese pianist Lang Lang and other performers leading up to an April 15, 2009, Carnegie Hall show.

Entries will be narrowed down by a panel of judges from the world's leading orchestras, including London, Berlin, Hong Kong, Sydney and New York, before semi-finalists will be voted on by viewers of YouTube, which is owned by Google.

Tilson Thomas said the program would "explore new ways for music lovers of all levels to use technology to discover how vast our tradition is."

Entrants must submit a video demonstrating their interpretation of an original composition by Chinese contemporary classical composer Tan Dun, and a video showcasing their musical and technical strengths.

"YouTube is the biggest stage on Earth, and I want to see what the world's undiscovered musical geniuses will create on it," said Dun, the Oscar-winning composer of the film "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."

Entrants can submit videos through January 28, 2009. YouTube viewers will vote on the semi-finalists February 14-22 and the winners will be announced on the YouTube website(http://www.youtube.com) on March 2.

YouTube's popularity has exploded since its inception three years ago. Anyone can post video to the site.

YouTube, which analysts estimate will bring in $200 million to $250 million for Google this year, has launched several recent e-commerce initiatives, including television and movie pacts and live event Web casting.

Other institutions participating in the site's classical music program include Amsterdam School of Music, Liceu Barcelona, Moscow Conservatory, Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and others.

Click here for article

At 26, the pianist Lang Lang is playing to sold-out houses around the world, attracting throngs to outdoor concerts and topping the classical sales charts with his Deutsche Grammophon recordings. Though a dedicated artist, Mr. Lang unabashedly trots out his flamboyant persona when the occasion calls for it, as happened this summer when he played in the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics before a television audience estimated to be 36 million.

Yet, from comments in interviews and passages in his recent book “Journey of a Thousand Miles: My Story,” written with David Ritz (published by Random House, in eight languages no less), Mr. Lang admits to being distressed by the steady stream of criticism he has taken in some quarters, especially from many reviewers. No one questions his astounding technique. And he brings keen musical instincts and a passion to communicate to every performance.

But like a hammy actor he has a penchant for interpretive exaggeration. His playing can be so intensely expressive that he contorts phrases, distorts musical structure and fills his music-making with distracting affectations. In recent years he has sought mentors, working with eminent musicians like the pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim and collaborating with strong, experienced conductors.

His latest recording, of the two Chopin piano concertos, with Zubin Mehta conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, just issued by Deutsche Grammophon, has been promoted almost as evidence of a new, more mature Lang Lang. And there are admirable qualities to Mr. Lang’s vibrant, sensitive and often poetic playing.

While not destined to enter the literary firmament, Mr. Lang’s autobiography reveals the story of a supremely gifted boy who was pushed mercilessly by a bullying father into a regimen of relentless discipline and practicing. At age 9 he was wrenched from his home in Shenyang, China, leaving behind the mother he adored, and taken by his father to Beijing, where he studied with a prickly and resentful teacher referred to in the book only as Professor Angry. Making his son “Number One” — invoked constantly as if it were a formal title — was the emotionally abusive father’s consuming goal.

The story suggests why Mr. Lang, from his earliest years, turned to the piano as an outlet for bottled-up feelings. And it puts in context his palpable desire to connect emotionally with audiences.

But is there a new, more mature Lang Lang? Yes and no, I would say, based on two recent performances he gave in New York: Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, with the conductor Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic, in a summer concert at Central Park; and Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto, with Christoph Eschenbach and the Philharmonic, which I heard on Nov. 7 at Avery Fisher Hall.

First, though, what is it about Mr. Lang’s playing that continues to bother some listeners?

The analogy to hammy acting is apt. Performing styles evolve over time as tastes shift. In the early decades of film flamboyant acting was the norm, and a master like John Barrymore practiced it with elan. But today’s movie audiences have become accustomed to cooler approaches. Barrymore would probably be confounded by a self-contained Tobey Maguire performance. You could imagine Barrymore complaining, “But the young man is not doing anything.”

Performance styles have evolved in classical music as well. As early as the 1940s Vladimir Horowitz, who came from the Russian Romantic school, was criticized by the composer and critic Virgil Thomson as a “master of distortion and exaggeration” — a tough assessment, perhaps, but not unfounded.

With Mr. Lang it’s not a matter of coming from a school of playing that favors interpretive freedom. Mr. Lang’s fussing with music can sometimes seem willful and self-indulgent.

But not lately. In July he triumphed with the Tchaikovsky concerto in the New York Philharmonic’s Central Park concert, playing with unflappable command and infectious energy. Though for me his playing was still a little flashy, Mr. Lang brought out inner voices and rhythmic intricacies that you seldom hear. Surely Mr. Gilbert, a dynamic yet exacting musician, was crucial to drawing this refreshingly straightforward performance from the excitable Mr. Lang.

Earlier this month, however, back with the Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall, Mr. Lang was in his self-indulgent mode for a performance of Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto, with Mr. Eschenbach conducting. Beethoven’s high classical style may not afford Mr. Lang many opportunities to impose an interpretation on the music. But he found them anyway.

In the sequence of stately phrases with which the piano introduces itself in the lively first movement, Mr. Lang played the first with clarity and grace, but then pulled back in volume dramatically, as if the phrase that followed was coming from some distant echo chamber. Sometimes passage work with runs in triplets or bursts of scurrying 16th notes would be played with uncanny articulation. Elsewhere the passage work would turn milky, soupy and, well, corny.

Mr. Lang was on to something when he conveyed the mystical strangeness of certain passages. But he played them with melodramatic obviousness. The final rondo had whiplash attacks and gleeful energy but was fussy, even cutesy. Mr. Eschenbach must bear some responsibility for being his soloist’s enabler, although in their 2007 recording of this work, along with Beethoven’s Fourth Concerto, with the Orchestre de Paris, Mr. Eschenbach drew playing from Mr. Lang that was less ostentatious and more direct. It would seem that before an audience Mr. Lang cannot contain himself.

In his memoir Mr. Lang recounts a horrifying incident involving what seems to have been a momentary breakdown by his father, Lang Guoren, when Lang Lang was only 9. He and his father were living together in Beijing, supported by his mother back in Shenyang, who worked as a telephone operator. At the time Lang Lang was studying privately with Professor Angry, hoping to gain the top spot in the grueling competition for entry into the conservatory. Nearly 2,000 students were applying for just 12 places.

For reasons that baffled the young boy, this teacher turned on Lang Lang and dismissed him. When the child returned from school — because the choir he accompanied, an activity that gave him great satisfaction, had an extended rehearsal — Lang Guoren screamed uncontrollably and seemed “out of his mind,” Mr. Lang writes.

“You have missed nearly two hours of practicing, and you can never get them back!” Lang Guoren yelled. “Everything is ruined!”

“You’re a liar and you’re lazy!” he continued. “You are horrible. And you have no reason to live.”

Lang Guoren thrust a bottle of antibiotic pills at his son and tried to get the boy to swallow them all. When Lang Lang fought back, his father ordered him to jump off the 11th-floor balcony.

Seething with long-repressed anger at his father, Lang Lang started hammering the wall with his fists, shouting, “I hate my hands!” This finally snapped his father out of his derangement. He burst into tears and rushed to stop his only child. But for months Lang Lang would neither talk to his father nor play the piano.

It is very telling that despite this childhood Mr. Lang dedicated his autobiography to his mother and father, who live in China and often travel with their son. “I couldn’t imagine what life would be like without him,” Mr. Lang writes.

In 1995, when he was 13, Mr. Lang entered a competition in Japan, determined to play Chopin’s Second Concerto as his primary piece. His teacher at the conservatory in Beijing thought he was not mature enough. So he played the piece for Professor Zhu Ya-Sen, the beloved teacher of his youth, a kindly woman who encouraged him. She told Lang Lang that the piece presented no technical problems for him. But “you must feel the longing and the pain,” she explained, and “express the deep emotions without fear or embarrassment.”

True enough. Nevertheless any great performance must balance the emotional with the intellectual. On Mr. Lang’s new recording of this concerto, he plays the wistful slow movement with wondrous delicacy and ravishing sonorities. Yet for all the dreamy lyricism and ethereal beauty of his playing, the elegantly ornamented melodic line loses lyrical tension because Mr. Lang can not help tugging at phrases and taking rubato rhythmic freedom to the limit. By milking every moment, he calls attention to the act of expressing the music rather than reining himself in a bit and letting the music be expressive.

This is not to say that Mr. Lang should conform to the current fashion for a cooler approach to performing. There are plenty of interpretatively bold pianists on the scene right now, including Martha Argerich, Krystian Zimerman and Piotr Anderszewski. But they are also intellectually probing musicians who apply analytic reasoning to every performance.

It may be an amazing thing to say of a 26-year-old pianist who could play Chopin’s 24 etudes, among the most technically challenging pieces in the repertory, in concert at 13, but Lang Lang is a work in progress. And that’s good news for classical music.

Meanwhile, he does important charitable work and has started a foundation to support the musical education of young people. Today some 50 million children are studying music in China, 36 million of them the piano, Mr. Lang proudly reports in his book. One can only hope that they are not all striving to be “Number One.”

Click here for article

One inescapable truth about pianist Lang Lang is that he's never long out of sight. Every time you turn around, the rock-star-status classical artist from China with the outsized personality and the Don King hairdo (it looks better on Lang Lang) is doing something big in public: a free concert in New York's Central Park on a screamingly red Steinway, which he's putting on eBay to benefit victims of the Beijing earthquake; an appearance at the Grammys in Los Angeles, banging out Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" with Herbie Hancock; opening the Olympic Games ceremonies in Beijing with a 5-year-old girl beside him on the piano bench, playing for an international television audience of 4.5 billion; launching his new Lang Lang International Music Foundation at Town Hall in New York to benefit children who want to study classical piano.

Oh, and publishing not one, but two different autobiographies (at age 26, mind you), one for kids and the other for adult readers.

And that's all within the past 10 months.

That high-octane exposure is about to get local, as Lang Lang comes to the Bay Area on Monday for a one-week residency with the San Francisco Symphony. During this, his sixth appearance with the orchestra, he will perform a solo recital, three subscription concerts under guest conductor Mark Wigglesworth and a chamber recital with S.F. Symphony violinist Nadya Tichman and cellist Peter Wyrick. In between, he will also visit San Francisco's School of the Arts for a morning performance and discussion with 300 public high school students and drop in on Gordon J. Lau Elementary in San Francisco, where kids and parents from four Chinatown schools are gathering to hear him. And on Dec. 5, Lang Lang will present a lecture-and-recital program in Davies Hall for a private audience of 2,000 high-school and middle-school music students coming from all over the Bay Area.

Reached by phone at his home in New York, Lang Lang says this "festival," as he calls it, is his third — he had one-week residencies earlier this fall both in Toronto and Chicago. "It's more difficult to do a festival because you need to learn a lot of repertoire," he says. "This is very challenging, so it is a lot harder."

On the other hand, he notes, it is a great thing for a guy who already has done 120 concerts this year, to stay planted in one place for a whole week. "At this state of my career, I like to spend more time in one city, so I'm not flying around all the time," he says. "You get more time to know the city."

He doesn't pause when asked which of the multiple San Francisco events he is anticipating most: "I'm doing three master classes, two in the schools and one master class in the theater."

His commitment to children, which got its first public airing when he was named a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in 2004, acquired new focus and direction with the Oct. 20 launch of his foundation and Web site (www.thelanglangfoundation.org), which already is supporting the musical education of three budding pianists under the age of 10.

"They are the future," Lang Lang says of children, lamenting that our concert halls are not exactly overrun with youngsters and that American public schools are not putting enough emphasis on music. "Without music, I don't think a kid is balanced."

The complaint is a bit ironic, coming from a young man whose own obsession-driven childhood in China was anything but balanced. In his riveting new autobiography "Journey of a Thousand Miles" (Spiegel & Grau, $27.95), Lang Lang describes with astonishing candor a close but tumultuous relationship with a stern-disciplinarian father whose own musical aspirations were cut off by the rigidities of the Cultural Revolution. Lang Guoren and his wife, limited by state policy to one child, threw all their hopes into their son, spending half a year's salary on a piano before he was 2 and embarking on a plan to turn him into the "Number One" pianist in the country. That the boy was immensely talented and, even before he was 5, just as committed to that goal, does not make some of the emotional torments he endured any less harrowing. To ensure that he have access to the best teachers, Lang Guoren quit his policeman's job in Shenyang and took his 8-year-old son to Beijing, where the two lived in squalid conditions in underheated rooms with poor plumbing, subsisting largely on a diet of poorly cooked rice and vegetables. Father pedaled son on a battered bicycle from home to school to piano lessons and back, micromanaging every second of the boy's time to maximize the hours spent at the keyboard. (Lang Lang's typical hourlong lunch break on school days, at his father's insistence, was broken into 15 minutes for eating and 45 minutes for practice.) Worst of all, though, was the heart-breaking seven-year separation from Lang Lang's beloved mother, whose salary as a telephone operator back in Shenyang was their only source of support.

Tensions between father and son were ever present, but they built to an explosive head after an uncompromising, unsympathetic teacher fired Lang Lang as her student, prompting the anxiety-ridden Lang Guoren to take a jaw-dropping leave of his senses and order his 10-year-old son to commit suicide. The child responded by banging clenched fists into the wall and boycotting the piano — and civil conversation with his father — for four months.

That this amazing story had a happy outcome is, of course, testament to Lang Lang's talent, persistence and, ultimately, faith in and love for his dad, who never sent him into a competition without an encouraging pat on the back. There were also chance encounters and lucky breaks that led to a full scholarship under pianist Gary Graffman's wing at the prestigious Curtis School of Music in Philadelphia.

Today, Lang Lang replies, "Absolutely, it is," when asked if it is not painful to recall such memories, let alone put them in print. Neither he nor his dad, however, appears to be bearing any grudges. Lang Guoren, an accomplished erhu (Chinese violin) player, occasionally plays in public with his son and serves as his manager in China.

"He was very, very nervous and very unsure about my future and his future," Lang Lang says. "He put too much tension into my career."

But discipline, no matter who is applying it, is a hard habit to break. Now that he is calling his own shots, Lang Lang says continuing to improve as an artist is still his No. 1 goal. He is studying the Bach "Goldberg Variations" — that famous Mt. Everest for pianists — and says he believes that there is nothing he cannot learn to play "if I work in the right direction."

"I'm really working hard," he says. "I only practice three hours (a day), but I analyze music and try to improve my mind — there's so much to do, and that's driving me pretty crazy!"

Click here for article

There's a whole raft of books and Web sites out there spun off the success of "1,000 Places to See Before You Die," but the copycats have upped the ante and gotten a little pushy.

Now we're challenged with "1,001 Things to Do Before You Die," "1,001 Books to Read Before You Die" and, more forcefully, "1,001 Albums You Must Listen to Before You Die." (You must, you hear?)

I haven't read any of these books or Web sites all the way through, mostly because of the 1,001 things I have to do before I can go to sleep each night. But their point is to enjoy as many of the planet's superlatives as possible: the most breathtaking views, the most awe-inspiring human achievements, etc., etc.

At the top of my list is to witness the best live performers in action, doing whatever it is they do. I've checked off (some of them repeatedly) the Penguins, U2, Frank Sinatra, LeBron James and Vladimir Horowitz.

I get to put more checks next to some big items on my list this week, because two giants of the piano, Garrick Ohlsson and Lang Lang, will be playing here.

Since piano was my all-out pursuit from childhood through graduate school, attending these concerts is nearly a given. But why would someone as nonathletic and klutzy as can be need to see LeBron James play basketball? Because excellence is just plain thrilling, isn't it? Especially when it approaches the superhuman.

Anyone who's survived high school gym class -- or simply understands the laws of gravity -- knows enough to gape in astonishment when, like last week in Cleveland, James dunks the ball after going airborne nearly at the free-throw line.

And anyone familiar with old cartoons probably knows enough about the piano to appreciate the pyrotechnics Lang Lang will bring to Heinz Hall Tuesday night.

Though his name is pronounced "Lawng-Lawng," Esquire magazine titled a 2005 piece about him "Bang Bang" and compared him to rock 'n' roll legend Jerry Lee Lewis. This Chinese phenomenon, who did his native land proud at the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, deplores the modern disconnect with classical music: "Put me on MTV, man. Let people see how cool Beethoven is."

Remember the Bugs Bunny short titled "Rhapsody Rabbit"? Or better yet, the Tom and Jerry classic, "The Cat Concerto"? Both cartoons use the score of Franz Liszt's "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2" as their plot, and both rabbit and cat get help playing this knuckle-buster from an orchestra and a meddling mouse.

Lang Lang was 3 years old when he saw the Tom and Jerry version and picked out the rhapsody's theme on the piano -- a destiny revealed.

But he had no orchestra or mouse or stretchy cartoon fingers to reach the piano's extremities when I heard him play the rhapsody two years ago at London's Royal Albert Hall. He did Horowitz's eye-popping arrangement as an encore after performing a Chopin piano concerto with the Pittsburgh Symphony. (Necessary disclaimer: My husband is a member of the symphony.)

The stranger sitting next to me started laughing when I did, about midway through this aural inferno. What can you do but marvel at such wizardry? We'll get a full helping of it tomorrow night, because Lang Lang is giving something increasingly rare: a solo recital.

Purists who bemoan his over-the-top antics should remember he's harking back to none other than Liszt, the 19th-century virtuoso whose on-stage theatrics the critics deplored, the first pianist to turn the piano sideways so audiences could admire his handsome profile, the first superstar at whose concerts women fainted.

Though I wouldn't play like that even if I could, I wouldn't miss his recital for the world. The man I would play like -- if God have given me more talent and hands that can span a 12th -- is Garrick Ohlsson. He, too, has a ferocious technique, but it's always subservient to the music's meaning.

He performs the Grieg Piano Concerto three times this week with the PSO. It was the first concerto I ever studied, and Mr. Ohlsson is the first pianist I ever heard in concert. My dad took me to hear him play Beethoven with the Kansas City Philharmonic years ago when I was climbing the high school competition ladder with the Grieg.

At a concert in the mid-'90s, he played an encore, a Chopin mazurka, so achingly perfect, so hauntingly beautiful, that I left immediately afterward, at intermission, knowing that nothing could surpass it. Little since then has, but we stay hungry for superlative moments like those. Maybe this week ...

Click here for article

As long as Lang Lang keeps returning to Chicago, he need never buy himself another beer -- or Cosmo -- in this town again.

Grateful locals can't help but feel partly connected to the Chinese pianist's rise. In 1999, the 17-year-old's last-minute substitution for an ailing Andre Watts at Ravinia helped catapult his career, and since then, Lang and his marketing team have expertly cultivated an artist and product in demand the world over. (The Lang Lang-themed Adidas sneaker currently retails for $125.)

Chicago continues to figure significantly in his success. Not only was Lang Lang the featured soloist in the CSO's opening night gala in September, he returned for a busy weekend to offer up something a little different at Symphony Center. If we've become cynically familiar with the showboating concerto specialist and the dazzling cadenza crafter, we've seldom seen the pianist in a modest chamber setting or jamming informally among friends in traditional Chinese music.

On Friday night, the rhinestone cowboy teamed up with CSO standouts John Sharp, cello, and concertmaster Robert Chen for Tchaikovsky's A Minor Trio, Op. 50 and Schubert's B-Flat Trio, D. 898. In Schubert's slow second movement, the pianist proved a brilliant and almost porous accompanist to Sharp's and Chen's lyrical phrasing. The three then fed off each other almost telepathically in Tchaikovsky's mountainous two-movement epic. These were surely two of the strongest chamber performances of the year.

Although the cognoscenti often snicker at Lang Lang's stage flamboyance, that same indulgent expression has provided him rock star status. (Has there ever been a more appropriate classical artist to perform during the glittery Olympic opening ceremonies?) On Saturday he turned on all the theatrics, which served him well for this particular setting.

The night began with 14-year-old Kate Liu, who won an audition held by the CSO in which the winner would receive her own masterclass with Lang Lang and would also get to perform alongside him in concert. She collected her prize when she played Schubert's Fantasy in F Minor, D. 940, with the superstar Saturday. This melancholic narrative unfolded under the four hands of these two precocious talents with grace, touch and wit. Lang then offered his own solo round of shimmering and tuneful Chinese gems.

Guo Gan, an erhu player, won hearts for his mind-bending virtuosic control over his tiny, cello-like instrument. His heartfelt solo in the "Shepherdess" and his breakneck duet with Lang in "Horse Racing" earned the crowd's rowdiest applause. Pipa player Yang Wei and bassist DaXun Zhang came out for arrangements of a mournful Piazzolla tango and a rollicking Brahms Hungarian Dance. When all four joined for the traditional tune "Three Six," the night seemed to culminate in a celebration.