Pop flops for Lang

Despite many instrumentalists choosing to collaborate with pop artists, pianist Lang Lang remains devoted to his classical repertoire.

He teamed up with Canto-pop singer Hacken Lee Hak-kan for the song I Won't Sing, but says the experience hasn't swayed him from his first love. 'I'm a pure classical musician. You have people like Vanessa Mae and Maksim [Mrvica], who do a lot of crossover work with artists, but they're not us.

'The Hacken thing was just one track and I've only done one song [like that] in all my life,' said the 24-year-old said. 'Artists who started off with crossover stuff, like Bond and Hayley [Westenra], aren't classical musicians, they're 'popsicals'.'

Lang (right) said classical musicians have different objectives. 'Of course, we do something for fun, but my focus is on Beethoven and Mozart. It's a totally different market. We're born classical and they're born crossover,' he said.

However, Lang likes his share of modern sounds. 'I do listen to pop music and rock'n'roll and artists such as Norah Jones, Alicia Keys and Beyonce. I'm a normal person as well,' he said, with a laugh.

Born in Shenyang, Lang was inspired at the age of two to learn the piano after watching a Tom and Jerry cartoon, in which Tom played Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No2.