Lang Lang
Pianist in Residence 2009/2010

He is without any doubt the rock star among ­today’s pianists. His home page looks at first glance like a pop singer’s, he tops the charts with his CD recordings of the classics; he has used the internet platform Second Life to give music history’s first virtual piano recital. And that’s not all: he jams with jazz greats like Herbie Hancock; he played for an estimated two billion worldwide TV viewers at the opening of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing; and – the latest coup! – he has teamed up with Adidas to create a new shoe model.

We’re speaking about Lang Lang, of course, who, like hardly another pianist before him, has at the age of barely 27 awakened in countless young people a love for piano music from Mozart to Rachmaninov. But numbered among his circle of fans are also many long-established classic ­lovers. And even critics the world over express their admiration for this genial artist – and in the same uninhibited manner with which Lang Lang delights his listeners.

Only in Germany – where steady invitations from such leading conductors as Sir Simon Rattle, Daniel Barenboim, Mariss Jansons, Christoph Eschenbach and ­Riccardo Chailly have made him a familiar and always welcome guest in the past few years – have his uninhibited joy in music making and his hyperkinetic media profile, but also, astonish­ingly, his flawless keyboard technique, repeatedly and often unfairly elicited malicious notices from critics. Not least because of that, the Berliner Philharmoniker are especially looking forward to welcoming Lang Lang in the 2009/2010 season as pianist-in-residence and to offering him the opportunity to present anew for discussion the entire range of his pianistic and interpretative skills.

As the seventh and, to date, youngest artist to be granted this honour, Lang Lang will appear this season in both halls of the Philharmonie: as soloist in the orchestra’s concerts, collaborat­ing with scholars of the Orchestra Academy and as piano accompanist in a song recital by ­Cecilia Bartoli, as well as – and it’s to this the ­Berliner Philharmoniker are looking forward most eagerly – the chamber-music partner of members of the orchestra.