Pianist

COMING TO AMERICA

After Lang Lang won the International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians in 1995, his father decided that the young pianist should continue his studies outside China. Lang Lang assumed he meant going to Germany, but no.

‘Europe has many wonderful teachers’ [said my father,] ‘but launching your career as a concert pianist will be easier from America. America is not as traditional or as stodgy as Europe. America is more open to new ideas and new artists. America has great music conservatories and great teachers… In America the sky is the limit.’ ‘But where will the money come from?’ I asked.

‘America. America is the richest country in the world.’

That’s taken from Journey of a Thousand Miles, Lang Lang’s highly readable autobiography, published in 2008. In many ways it’s a pure love letter to the US, and in Lang Lang’s case, his sense of admiration is absolutely understandable. He did find a wonderful teacher in Gary Graffman, and his tuition and expenses were all paid for by the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. And he did indeed encounter one person who was willing to take a professional risk on him:

Christoph Eschenbach. It was Eschenbach who gave him his big break, when he asked a 17-year-old Lang Lang to replace André Watts playing Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at a concert called ‘The Gala of the Century’

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