Lang Lang (born June 14, 1982) is a pianist from Shenyang, China. Lang Lang was two years old when he saw Tom playing piano in The Cat Concerto, a Tom and Jerry cartoon on TV (Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C-sharp minor composed by Franz Liszt). According to Lang, this first contact to the western music was what motivated him to learn piano. He began lessons at age 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 under Professor Zhao Ping-Guo. At 11, he was awarded first prize for outstanding artistic performance at the Fourth International Young Pianists Competition in Germany. In 1995, at 13 years of age, he played the Op. 10 and Op. 25 Chopin Etudes, at Beijing Concert Hall and, in the same year, won first place at the Tchaikovsky International Young Musicians' Competition in Japan, playing Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra in a concert broadcast by NHK Television. At 14 he was a featured soloist at the China National Symphony's inaugural concert, which was broadcast by CCTV and attended by President Jiang Zemin. The following year he began studies with Gary Graffman at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.
Lang Lang's 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", in which he played Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (conducted by Christoph Eschenbach). The Chicago Tribune called him the greatest, most exciting keyboard talent encountered in many years. In 2001 he made his sold-out Carnegie Hall debut with Yuri Temirkanov, 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 an acclaimed BBC Proms debut, prompting The Times of London's critic 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 recent recital debut in the Berlin Philharmonic, the Berliner Zeitung wrote: "Lang Lang is a superb musical performer whose artistic touch is always in service of the music."
However, Lang Lang's performances have also been heavily criticized. His performance style has been referred to as having "soggy rhythms and heavy phrasing" and as being "truly boring', "just bad" and "unendurable." Critics who feel that his playing lacks sensitivity have given him the nickname "Bang Bang".
Lang Lang is a Steinway artist who records exclusively for Deutsche Grammophon.
On 27 November 2006, he emigrated to Hong Kong.
His most recent release, Dragon Songs, explores traditional Chinese music (and Chinese musical instruments) and features the popular Yellow River Concerto, written by Xian Xinghai.
