Lang Lang (Chinese: 郎朗; pinyin: Láng Lǎng; born 14 June 1982) is a Chinese classical pianist. He has performed with major orchestras around the world and appeared at many leading concert halls. Active since the 1990s, he was the first Chinese pianist to be engaged by the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic and many of the top American orchestras.
He was also a judge on the first two series of the British music competition television series The Piano.
Lang Lang was born in Shenyang, China, in 1982, to a family of the Manchu Niohuru clan. His father Lang Guoren is a musician who plays the erhu. Both his father and mother, also a musician, were displaced to work on rice farms in the country during the Cultural Revolution, before Lang was born.
The Tom and Jerry episode The Cat Concerto, which features Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, motivated two-year-old Lang to learn the piano. He started lessons with Zhu Yafen at age three, won first place at the Shenyang Piano Competition and performed his first public recital when he was five.
When Lang was nine, he was expelled from his piano tutor's studio for "lack of talent". Lang has stated that upon learning of this, his father flew into a rage and told Lang that he "shouldn't live any more", ordering him to jump off the balcony of their 11th floor family apartment. Another music teacher at his state school noticed Lang and asked him to play the second movement of Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 10, which reminded Lang of his love for the instrument. Lang later studied under Zhao Ping-Guo at Beijing's Central Conservatory of Music.
Lang won the Xinghai National Piano Competition in Beijing in 1993 and first prize for outstanding artistic performance at the International Competition for Young Pianists in Ettlingen, Germany, in 1994. In 1995, Lang played the Chopin études at the Beijing Concert Hall, won the International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians in Japan, and performed as soloist with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra. Fourteen-year-old Lang was a featured soloist for the China National Symphony's inaugural concert in September 1996, then General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Jiang Zemin met Lang after this performance.
Lang and his father moved to the United States in 1997, so Lang could pursue studies with Gary Graffman at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
Lang has been noted by musicians and critics around the world. The conductor Jahja Ling remarked: "Lang Lang is special because of his total mastery of the piano... He has the flair and great communicative power." National Public Radio's Morning Edition remarked: "Lang Lang has conquered the classical world with dazzling technique and charisma." It is often noted that Lang successfully straddles two worlds, classical prodigy and rock-like "superstar", a phenomenon summed up by The Times (London) journalist Emma Pomfret, who wrote, "I can think of no other classical artist who has achieved Lang Lang's broad appeal without dumbing down."
Lang's performance style was met with controversy when he gained wider recognition in the classical music scene in 1999. At that time, pianist Earl Wild called him "the J. Lo of the piano." Others have described him as immature, but admitted that his ability to "conquer crowds with youthful bravado" is phenomenal among classical musicians. His maturity in subsequent years was reported by The New Yorker: "The ebullient Lang Lang is maturing as an artist." In April 2009, when Time magazine included Lang in its list of the 100 most influential people, Herbie Hancock described his playing as "so sensitive and so deeply human", commenting: "You hear him play, and he never ceases to touch your heart."
In 2001, after a Carnegie Hall debut with Yuri Temirkanov, he traveled 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. The same year, he made his BBC Proms debut, prompting a music critic of the British newspaper The Times 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 recital debut with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Berliner Zeitung wrote: "Lang Lang is a superb musical performer whose artistic touch is always in service of the music". In 2004, Lang was featured in Radio Television Hong Kong's TV documentary Outstanding Young Chinese Musicians. However, recent reviews have been mixed; Lang’s playing style has faced criticism from some for being overwrought or bombastic. The pianist has commented on the backlash: "You get many good reviews from the beginning", he says, "and then the critics start criticising you. It's strange. The things they liked you for first—unique, fresh—they say is great. And then later they say you're too fresh, too unique. But they're the same thing!"
Lang was the featured soloist on the Golden Globe-winning score of The Painted Veil and can be heard on the soundtrack of The Banquet. He has recorded for the Deutsche Grammophon and Telarc labels. His album of the first and fourth Beethoven piano concertos with the Orchestre de Paris and Christoph Eschenbach debuted at No. 1 on the Traditional Classical Billboard Chart. In 2008, he was the pianist on Mike Oldfield's 2008 album Music of the Spheres. In 2010, he signed with Sony for a reported $3 million. Metallica performed the song One alongside Lang at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards in 2014.
In December 2008, Lang partnered with Google and YouTube in the project YouTube Symphony Orchestra.
At the White House state dinner in honour of General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Hu Jintao's visit on 19 January 2011, one of the tunes Lang played was the song "My Motherland" from the movie Battle on Shangganling Mountain, a film about a Chinese victory in the Korean War. The song's lyrics include the line "We deal with wolves with guns", which in the film referred indirectly to the United States Army. Although the tune is popular and has lost much of its political and historical significance in China, the performance was interpreted by American conservatives as insulting the US.
In response to the controversy, Lang denied that he intended to insult the United States. He later released a statement stating that he "selected this song because it has been a favorite of mine since I was a child. It was selected for no other reason but for the beauty of its melody." White House spokesperson Tommy Vietor also responded by saying "My Motherland" is "widely known and popular in China for its melody. Lang played the song without lyrics or reference to any political theme... any suggestion that this was an insult to the United States is just flat wrong."
Lang has also recorded piano works for the video game Gran Turismo 5's soundtrack, mostly under the "Classical" subgenre. This included versions of Danny Boy, Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer", Beethoven's 8th Piano Sonata, and one of the game's intro pieces, the third movement from Prokofiev's 7th Piano Sonata.
Lang has played for UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, President Barack Obama, Queen Elizabeth II, Chinese leader Hu Jintao, President Horst Köhler, Prince Charles (now King Charles III), then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, President Nicolas Sarkozy, and Polish President Lech Kaczyński.
In October 2016, Lang was invited to the Vatican to perform for Pope Francis.
He cancelled performances from March to July 2017, after injuring his left arm.