Lang Lang

Lang Lang (born June 14, 1982, Shenyang, China) is a Chinese virtuoso pianist who won international acclaim while a teenager and whose expressiveness and charisma made him one of the most sought-after performers in the early 21st century.

Lang began taking piano lessons at age three and gave his first public recital two years later. In 1991 he entered the Central Music Conservatory in Beijing. He soon began to attract wide attention as a musical prodigy. At age 13 he won first prize at the Tchaikovsky International Competition for Young Musicians in Japan and also appeared at the Beijing Concert Hall, where he performed the complete Frédéric Chopin Études. The following year, in 1996, he was featured as a soloist at the China National Symphony Orchestra’s inaugural concert, with Pres. Jiang Zemin in attendance.

Leaving China for the United States in 1997, Lang enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he had been offered a scholarship. For the next five years he studied under noted pianist Gary Graffman, president of the Curtis Institute. Lang’s pace of development was astonishing, and in 1998 he made his American debut with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Maryland. In 1999 at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Illinois, Lang stepped in at the last moment for an ailing André Watts and earned rave reviews for his performance of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat Minor with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra—and became famous virtually overnight.

In 2001 he went on to sell out New York City’s Carnegie Hall in a concert with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Also that year Lang made a triumphant return tour to China, where, with the Philadelphia Orchestra, he played for an audience of several thousand. In 2002 he won the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival’s first-ever Leonard Bernstein Award for distinguished musical talent. Lang again toured China in August 2003, and in 2004 he became the first Chinese pianist to perform with the Berlin Philharmonic.

By the time he was in his early 20s, Lang had firmly established himself as one of the most prominent young talents on the international classical music scene. He had already performed with many of the leading American orchestras and conductors and had played in major concert halls across Europe, North America, and Asia. His eponymous debut, recorded live in recital at the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, Massachusetts, was released in 2001 and quickly leaped to the upper ranks of Billboard magazine’s classical music charts. Subsequent recordings that enjoyed similar success included Lang Lang Live at the Proms (2002), Lang Lang Live at Carnegie Hall (2004). Lang Lang: Dragon Songs (2007), a collection of 20th-century works by Chinese composers, and Chopin: The Piano Concertos (2009). Lang’s memoir, Journey of a Thousand Miles (cowritten with David Ritz), was published in 2008.

After performing at the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Lang was often asked to play at large-scale events, including the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony and Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee concert (2012). He also performed with surprising collaborators—namely, heavy metal band Metallica and musician Pharrell Williams for the 2014 and 2015 Grammy Awards ceremonies, respectively. Meanwhile, Lang released recordings of the repertoires of Franz Liszt (2011), Chopin (2012), and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (2014). In 2017 Lang injured his left arm and required a yearlong break from music. He was back onstage in 2018 and recording in 2019. Lang’s subsequent albums included Piano Book (2019) and Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations (2020).