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Lang Lang serves as guest editor in the most recent issue of Wallpaper Magazine. The magazine is currently on sale at a newsstand near you!

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He is a prodigy, of that there is no doubt. But it is Lang Lang’s zeal for his craft, not simply his talent, that has rendered him a musician of exceptional calibre.

On Saturday, the 30 year-old pianist from the industrial city of Shenyang in northeast China will be the headline act at the National Arts Centre’s annual gala. A day earlier, he held a master class with young musicians in Ottawa – part of his ongoing mission to foster the same driving enthusiasm for the classics that has motivated him since he was a toddler.

Yannick Nézet-S éguin, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s music director designate, captured the hearts of the huge crowd Wednesday night in a memorable evening of music making that included the formidable talents of Chinese pianist Lang Lang.

Nézet-S éguin, who was making his Saratoga Performing Arts Center debut, doesn’t stand on ceremony. Rather, he seems almost like one of the guys up there on the stage with a relaxed and comfortable air. But as concertmaster David Kim told the audience prior to the performance, every concert with him on the podium was meaningful and a treat.

Chinese concert pianist Lang Lang, conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra had New York heavyweights Tony Bennett, Candice Bergen, Barbara Walters, Mercedes Bass, Renée Fleming and Jessye Norman on their feet Wednesday at Carnegie Hall's opening night.

"You can not have a better orchestra than the Vienna Philharmonic," said Ms. Bass, wearing a black-and-red Oscar de la Renta creation.

"They have played at Carnegie Hall many times and this is their 101st anniversary. It is always a treat to have them."

Two pianists took the keyboard on Saturday night. Sitting side by side at a massive Steinway, Christoph Eschenbach, the new music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, and Lang Lang, the superstar pianist from China, played two movements from Debussy's "Petite Suite," the first one tender, the second antic, with leaps of finger and wrist that set the audience giggling.
The performance was an encore at the National Symphony Orchestra's season-opening gala at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. It signaled some new beginnings.

MATSUMOTO, Japan — The big news from Asia about Western classical music has been coming for a decade from China, where the surge in education and performance has been explosive. The brash and hugely gifted pianist Lang Lang has been an apt symbol of that explosion, though new star Chinese performers and composers seem to emerge by the month. The Chinese classical scene was amply represented in New York last season, alongside indigenous traditions, in a Carnegie Hall festival, Ancient Paths, Modern Voices, that prominently featured Lang Lang.