Lang is currently in the midst of a North American tour with the China Philharmonic, and tonight he’ll play in Toronto, in a virtually sold-out engagement presented by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Roy Thomson Hall. His touring schedule – with a dozen performances in just 18 days – is demanding; but for Lang, who currently plays over 100 concerts a year, it’s business as usual.

Off stage, at his New York hotel the morning after his Avery Fisher performance, he’s relaxed and amiable. "I was pleased," he says in lightly accented English, reflecting on the concert the day before. "I think the Rachmaninov went very well – and the China Philharmonic was very impressive." He goes on to explain that Chinese orchestras, when they tour North America, usually find themselves playing for expatriate Chinese communities – and this tour, which is attracting a broader audience, is a something of a breakthrough for the Beijing-based China Philharmonic.

But let there be no mistake: the near-capacity audience that showed up at Lincoln Center was there, first and foremost, to hear Lang. Since he first made a name for himself in the West, filling in on short notice for pianist André Watts in a Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert in 1999, he’s become a cultural icon – a symbol of China’s rising stature in the world of classical music. Lang has been highly visible in the USA, reaching a wide audience through appearances on such mass-market TV programs as 60 Minutes, Good Morning America and The Tonight Show.

The story of his rise from humble origins has become well known. He was born in Shenyang, a city in northern China (the former capital of Manchuria). His father, a musician who plays a Chinese stringed instrument called the erhu, recognized talent in his son – his only son, due to China’s "one child" policy – and cobbled together $300 to buy a piano. The young prodigy won his first piano competition at the age of five, and when he was nine his parents decided that he should continue his education in Beijing. This was no easy matter: Lang Sr. quit his job to accompany his son to the capital and care for him. Lang’s mother remained in Shenyang as the family’s sole breadwinner.

"At this time I didn’t enjoy my life," recalls Lang. "The living conditions were poor: we had an apartment for just $15 a month." Money was scarce, and when Lang entered international piano competitions, his father had to borrow travel expenses. The sacrifices made by Lang’s family have been documented in How High is the Father’s Heart, a book published in China five years ago. As well, the biography also hints at more disturbing aspects of the father-son relationship: once, when the nine-year-old Lang was late coming home to practice the piano, Lang Sr. flew into a rage and ordered the terrified child to kill himself, offering him a choice of poison or a fall from their eleventh-storey window. Poverty, separation and an uncertain future were taking their toll on the Langs – but the family’s financial and emotional investments began to pay off when their son, at the age of 15, was admitted to Philadelphia’s elite Curtis Institute of Music with a full scholarship. (He still lives in Philadelphia.)

Lang has been through some challenging times – but his path has been smooth compared to the adversities pianists in China faced a generation earlier. "In my father’s time, most people didn’t have a chance to touch a piano," observes Lang. "For them the piano was a far-away dream. There was no money, and it was not a good time, because of the Cultural Revolution."

Indeed, China’s attempt, in the 1960s and 1970s to eradicate all traces of Western influence was particularly hard on pianists. Many had their fingers broken, or worse, by Red Guards, and a few were driven to suicide. In the power struggles of the post-Mao years, pianists remained controversial: Yin Chengzong, once favoured for embracing revolutionary politics, was denounced and fled the country; and Liu Shikun, whose father-in-law was a founder of the Red Army, was jailed for corruption. Things have settled down since then, but the uneasy relationship between music and politics in China still occasionally rears its head: in 1997 the cellist Yo-Yo Ma found himself banned from performing in China because he played on the soundtrack of Seven Years in Tibet, a film about the Dalai Lama.

Yet despite the rocky history of Western music in China, there are, says Lang, currently about nine million Chinese piano students (some sources have pushed the figure as high as 38 million), and China manufactures more pianos than any other nation. A glittering new concert hall was recently opened in Shanghai – and China boasts a new generation of pianists, most prominently Lang and Yundi Li, winner of the 2000 Chopin Competition in Warsaw.

While China is eager to establish itself as a leading force in classical music – much as other Asian nations, such as Japan and South Korea have done – not everyone is convinced that Lang’s rise to fame is a great leap forward. He certainly doesn’t lack for critical praise – the Times of London lauded his "youth, freshness, force and agility," and American Record Guide magazine applauded his "creativity and imagination." And he enjoys the support of several prominent classical musicians, including the pianist-conductor Daniel Barenboim. But some critics have taken exception to his freewheeling style. The Chicago Tribune called a performance "unacceptably willful," and Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times has gone on a veritable anti-Lang crusade, criticizing his playing as "often incoherent, self-indulgent and slam-bang crass."

Lang is unconcerned. "Everyone has an opinion," he says with a dismissive wave of his hand. "I get about 500 reviews a year – if a large amount are good reviews, that’s fine. You cannot get all good reviews!" He’s more interested in performing – and in seeing the world. "There are so many places that I’d like to go. Last year I went to Australia and New Zealand, and this year I will go to Egypt and to South America."

The poor boy from a remote corner of China is clearly proud of what he’s accomplished – and sees, in his stellar career, the opportunity to Make a Difference. Once something of a "cause" himself, in his struggling teens, Lang now lends his support to a number of causes: winning young people over to classical music, promoting of Chinese composers and performers in the West and, as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, raising money for children in Africa.

And he remains close to his family, often travelling with a parent while on tour. "This is not something childish," he protests. "Sometimes on a tour, you don’t feel normal. You need to feel normal, like when you are at home with friends and family – to talk about the things on your mind. It helps keep you placed on the ground."

© 2005 Colin Eatock

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