HKAPA

Celebrated in all the music capitals of the world, 24-year-old Lang Lang has demonstrated an extraordinary level of musicianship in the widest range of repertoire. He plays sold-out recitals in all the major halls of the world. He has performed with Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic and the top American orchestras. At the invitation of President George Bush, he performed for Mr and Mrs President and their invited guests at the White House, and he was invited by President Horst Köhler of Germany to play a recital for President Hu Jintao of China in the Berlin Parliament.

Lang Lang has been featured in The New York Times Magazine and The Wall Street Journal. He was selected by Teen People’s as the ‘Top Twenty Teens Who Will Change the World’. His talents and achievements were recognised by the United Nations’ Children’s Fund (UNICEF) who appointed him their youngest international Goodwill Ambassador.

Born in 1982 in Shenyang, he began piano lessons at the age of three. At the age of five he won the Shenyang Piano Competition. He entered Beijing’s Central Music Conservatory when he was nine. At the age of 11, he won the first prize and award for outstanding artistic performance at the Fourth International Young Pianists Competition in Germany. In 1995 at 13 years of age, he won first prize at the Tchaikovsky International Young Musicians’ Competition in Japan. At 14 he was a featured soloist at the China National Symphony’s inaugural concert, attended by President Jiang Ze-Min. The following year he began studies with Gary Graffman at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, from which he graduated in 2003.

In 2002, he became the first recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Award at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival. In 2004, he won the Pennsylvania Governor’s Artist of the Year Award. Also that same year, he earned the 2004 ‘Musician of the Year’ Echo Klassik Award in the Instrumental Piano category. His live recording of his Carnegie recital debut won the ‘2005 Amadeus Austrian Music Award’.