TO GET A SENSE of how far Lang Lang has advanced in his career, consider just a few of his 150-odd engagements this year. On January 17, the 23-year-old Shenyang native will become the first pianist to hold a recital at Beijing's 8,000-seat Great Hall of the People, a venue normally reserved for state-level functions. A week later, he'll be guest soloist at a Hong Kong Philharmonic Society concert, before returning to the capital to perform in a Lunar New Year's Eve variety show to be televised nationally on January 28.
And in June, he'll play at the opening ceremony of the soccer World Cup finals in Germany. Up to three billion people worldwide are expected to watch the Chinese prodigy perform.
By any standard, Lang is hot property. But his current concerns are more prosaic: What should he play at the World Cup finals?
'I'm so excited about performing at its opening,' says Lang. 'I'll probably choose Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody.'
The nine-minute work, known for its technical complexity and improvisatory dynamic, occupies a special place in Lang's career. He first heard it played on piano in a Tom and Jerry cartoon - 'That cat was almost my first piano teacher,' he says - and it inspired him to take up the instrument.
Vladimir Horowitz's transcription of the Liszt composition into a dazzling showpiece roused the prodigy to constantly challenge the limits of piano wizardry. It's the 1953 Horowitz version of the work - which is much harder to play than the original - that Lang has embraced on his latest album, Memory, and that he performs as part of an ongoing 11-city tour of the mainland.
