Lang Lang

Chinese piano prodigy Lang Lang (b. Shenyang, June 14 1982) won a series of competitions before moving to the USA, where his career took off. At just eighteen, he gave his first concert at New York's Carnegie Hall (2001), and two years later recorded the critically acclaimed program of Tchaikovsky - Mendelssohn piano concertos with Daniel Barenboim and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Since then, his albums such as the Memory recital (2006) and the Beethoven: Piano Concertos No.1 & No.4 program have regularly topped the classical music charts. The first Chinese artist to be nominated for a Grammy Award (2007), Lang Lang performed at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games the following year and set up a foundation to promote emerging talent. From then on, with his inclusion in Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world, Lang Lang's career took on a starry path, bolstered by sponsorship, promotion, his contributions to film and video game soundtracks, rock (Mike Oldfield), pop (Bruno Mars), rap (Eminem, Kendrick Lamar) and jazz (Herbie Hancock, Quincy Jones) albums, and his appearances at events such as the opening ceremony of the Shanghai World Expo (2010). In 2011, he paid a timely tribute to Franz Liszt in My Piano Hero, followed by The Chopin Album (CD/DVD, 2012), a collection entirely dedicated to his favourite composer. That same year, the pianist gave a recital in front of ten thousand spectators at the Berlin O2 World arena. Named Messenger of Peace by the United Nations (2013), Lang Lang records the double concerto recital The Mozart Album with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt, performs at the Grammy Awards ceremony with the band Metallica and collaborates on Jean-Michel Jarre's album Electronica 1: The Time Machine. Winner of the Echo Klassik awards (2013, 2015), he publishes the double recital of Lang Lang concertos in Paris (2015) and crosses genres in New York Rhapsody (2016), featuring guests Herbie Hancock, Lindsey Stirling and Madeleine Peyroux. In 2020, the Piano Book souvenir album released the previous year was followed by a performance of Bach's Goldberg Variations, in the studio and in the Leipzig church where the composer worked. The next episode sees the pianist join the anniversary of Saint-Saëns's death with a program including Carnival of the Animals conducted by Andris Nelsons and a version narrated by Jimmy Fallon. 2025 saw the release of the second volume of his personal music diary, Piano Book 2, a new anthology of varied pieces by great composers and other popular melodies.