“From BBC Magazine”

It may have been the big Romantic repertoire that made Lang Lang his fame and fortune, but in his early days it was Mozart that kept him grounded. Now, he tells Jessica Duchen, the time has come for him to be once again seduced by his old friend.

As heroes and villains go, Lang Lang holds a unique position as, possibly, both. To many, this dynamic former prodigy turned global superstar is a one-man revolution: in what has become known as the ‘Lang Lang Effect’ he has inspired tens of millions of children in his native China to take up the piano. He reaches audiences of whom other musicians can only dream – the young, the hip, the sports-aware; he has even created a foundation to encourage a resurgence in music education and is a UN Messenger for Peace.

To his detractors, though, it can seem that he has committed some sort of cardinal sin by becoming too popular. Some Steinway pianos, Montblanc watches and even a line of black and gold Adidas trainers have all carried his name. Traditional piano fans, meanwhile, cruelly nicknamed him ‘Bang Bang’ for his somewhat extrovert style of performing.

At 32, Lang Lang himself keeps evolving. In 15 years he has offered us a roller-coaster of different impressions. First there was the teenager in a turquoise silk jacket playing Mendelssohn at the Royal Festival Hall with the delicacy and finesse of a hummingbird; then the serious young artist whose Wigmore Hall and Proms debuts offered colour, insight and magic by the gallon. After that, though, there ensued untrammelled over projection, burgeoning brand-awareness – symptoms, some might say, of selling out. The halls sold out too, of course.

Catching up with Lang Lang in Salzburg, all that seems a very long way off. Clad in black (Armani) with lime-green trainers, he beams charisma across the hotel foyer; fans venture over to ask for autographs and selfies. He has time for everyone, harming them with his positivity – but above all, he is here to play Mozart.

Music does not get much more serious than recording Mozart with conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt. His latest album features two of Wolfgang Amadeus’s best-loved concertos, the G major K453 and C minor K491, with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by the elder statesman of historically informed performance. Lang Lang acknowledges that they might seem an unlikely match – but he makes it clear that he reveres the conductor and is eager to soak up his influence.

‘Many people wondered how Maestro Harnoncourt and I would work together,’ he says. ‘It’s actually quite smooth. For him I have 200 per cent respect and when he’s talking I just like to listen. I love his ideas and it’s a great learning experience. We are 50 years apart in age, but it feels totally authentic.

‘What I like about him is that he’s such a free, spiritual person,’ he adds. ‘In music he never wants to do the same thing twice. He’s traditional, but he’s always talking about the soul, about things happening, rather than about theory. His theory is to show that music is free.

‘He says what he feels is right and doesn’t compromise, no matter who he conducts. He gives his views in the most sincere way. At the first rehearsal he told the orchestra: “I don’t want everything to be totally together and I don’t want it to be clean!” He showed that he wanted an authentic, grounded sound, rather than something digital, clear and mechanical.’

Working with Harnoncourt, Lang Lang says, has completely changed his idea of how Mozart can and should sound. ‘He gave me his score so that I had the bowings in front of me and I tried to do the same phrasing on the piano,’ he says. ‘He explained to me how Mozart’s articulations are done, and the different styles involved: which part is like religious music, or country music, or dance music; which cadence means tears, which means harmony and heavenliness. He had an incredibly logical theory using Mozart’s letters and period instruments, explaining all this knowledge and precision in the style of Mozart’s music, taste and drama.

‘This will be a milestone in my career – I will try to always remember this kind of sound he produced with the Vienna Philharmonic. I don’t know how to follow it,’ he adds with a laugh, ‘but I will always remember it.’

One idea, though, proved a step too far. ‘My first time in Salzburg I played the Bach Goldberg Variations on a fortepiano for him,’ Lang Lang recalls. ‘It was very difficult, but I did it – but then he asked if we could consider using a fortepiano for the Mozart recording. I said, ‘No, I’m sorry!’ I can have fun with it, but to make a recording with a high level of control is too difficult.’ The fortepiano is a totally different instrument, he points out, and requires mastering in its own right: otherwise, ‘it’s like playing football in a basketball court’.

His demurral appears to have thrown the project into abeyance for a couple of years; he says that it was only after he performed the Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 1 at Carnegie Hall with Harnoncourt in 2010 that the conductor agreed to take the project forward with a modern grand. ‘Then we worked for another two years,’ Lang Lang adds. ‘I’m so lucky, waiting years for this – when we finished the recording I had the biggest smile on my face. I couldn’t believe I actually did it.’

Mozart’s music has been with Lang Lang since the outset. Thinking back to his childhood, he says that Mozart kept him on the rails. ‘Once I nearly quit the piano because I was thrown out by my teacher,’ he recalls. ‘But at my school in music class the other kids asked me to play some Mozart and I got out the slow movement of the Sonata K330– and I thought: “This is such beautiful music, why should I quit?”‘ He remained nervous, he says, about performing the composer’s works until he was 17 and worked on the piano duets with one of his mentors, Christoph Eschenbach, gaining insight into the music’s sound and style.

His favourite Mozartians are many and varied: he names pianists Clara Haskil and Daniel Barenboim as inspirations, besides Murray Perahia’s ‘beautiful pianissimos’, the lyricism of Arthur Rubinstein’s recordings and the originality of Friedrich Gulda and Vladimir Horowitz. ‘We know there’s a certain Mozart style, but everyone has their own understanding of it,’ he says, adding that Radu Lupu’s Mozart in concert was ‘like walking on water’.

The Romantic war-horse concertos that helped to build Lang Lang’s fame are no longer so vital as the pianist shifts his interests backwards and forwards in time. His recent recordings include concertos by Bartók and Prokofiev and, for the Richard Strauss 2014 anniversary, the Burleske.

‘I forced myself to stop playing Rachmaninov’s Third,’ he remarks. ‘I haven’t played it for eight years. I love Russian music and Chopin, but the older I get, the more I feel I would like to do more Bach, as much Mozart as possible and music like the Berg Sonata, which is an incredible piece. Sometimes when we’re young, people demand the big Romantic concertos – maybe audiences will come and hear them more, maybe the record company will say it will sell more copies. So you play something for yourself – but also for other reasons…

‘After you turn a certain age and you know a little more, you can think more about what you yourself really should do. You can’t just play emotional programmes all the time – you also need to learn the logical stuff. And maybe as you work, the logical pieces become emotional as well.’

Lang Lang’s popular image can appear dominated by high Romanticism and big gestures. His sometimes shocking autobiography depicts a hair-raising relationship with his demanding father; his albums, too, have often told a story in which he is the central figure. Memories chronicled his early life, from the Mozart Sonata K330 to the Chopin B minor Sonata; a Chinese album featured the Yellow River Concerto; and live performances from Carnegie Hall are captured for posterity.

‘Sometimes you get criticised for being popular, but there’s nothing I can do about it,’ Lang shrugs. ‘I just keep playing my concerts. You cannot change anything. You do your thing and focus on the music. In the classical music world there’s a theory that when you become popular then you’re not serious enough. But I think you can be both, if you go in the right direction. ‘Those comments are a good reminder,’ he adds. ‘They push me more towards music-making and show the danger of losing ground. I take it as something positive.’

Popularity has advantages, he adds: it gives him a platform to do more for music education. After the 2008 Olympics he launched the Lang Lang Foundation with the mission statement: ‘To inspire and motivate the next generation of classical music lovers and performers and to encourage music performance at all levels as a means of social development for youth, building self-confidence and a drive for excellence.’

It offers several key projects at different levels. Among them are the ‘101 Pianists’; the Lang Lang Junior Music Camps for 12 gifted youngsters; a Young Scholars Program; he Oxford Piano Festival and Summer Academy; a busy schedule of international masterclasses; and a new further effort entitled ‘Lang Lang’s Keys of Inspiration’, in which the foundation works with schools to build up music lessons.

There, Lang Lang stresses, method is the most vital thing: money would be useless without it. ‘You can bring money in to buy instruments, but you need the right method for teaching and you need more teachers. Now when I go to a city,’ he adds, ‘I don’t just play a concert. I meet the local education people and talk about how we are going to synchronise; and then at every concert we meet new potential scholars.’

Next, the foundation wants to take music into hospitals. ‘This year Maestro Plácido Domingo challenged me to the Ice Bucket,’ Lang Lang declares. ‘But I’m going to respond instead by going to play to the patients at the ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) hospital in Taipei. I think when you take music into hospitals you can really change the patients’ lives. You try to make them stronger, to encourage them and to make them happier and more comfortable.’

Talk to a British or American pianist about the classical music scene and one can sometimes imagine the end of civilisation is nigh. Lang Lang, though, offers alternative images: evocations of a world in which music is flourishing, but in which the centre has shifted east. He says he finds the Lang Lang Effect ‘quite amazing’.

‘I have friends in Germany whose small regional conservatory suddenly has a big line of Asian applicants,’ he says. ‘I think the Chinese markets are very good for the future of classical music – and the world needs new markets. We want to play different stuff and not just in the great traditional spaces where we’ve always played before. We need to think about Peru, Egypt, or secondary cities in China that have populations of over 10 million. A lot of new concert halls have been built in the Middle East. Next year I’m doing a Middle East tour and I’m looking forward to seeing how classical music is moving on there.

‘I did a big tour in South America this year because of the World Cup. The markets are amazing, there are some very fine young conductors coming through, and the most beautiful theatre of all is in Buenos Aires, the Teatro Colón!

‘Coming back to Asia, you really feel the heat for classical music: even in the smaller cities almost every family has a piano. So I’m very positive about the future. I think our market now is very good and very lively: it’s become much more diversified.’

Lang Lang never stops diversifying. This autumn Faber Music launched his new set of five tutor books, Mastering the Piano, and he is keen to encourage pop and other musicians – who often have a classical training behind them – to write classical pieces in their own way. ‘We need new compositions and today we are not so boxed in,’ he says. You couldn’t call someone who has performed with Metallica ‘boxed in’. ‘That’s something I never, ever thought I would do,’ he laughs, remembering his star turn with the heavy metal legends at last January’s Grammy Awards.

‘The younger generation of musicians is quite lucky,’ he suggests. ‘Fifteen years ago, when I started, you had to wear a black or white tie on a CD cover, but now it seems nobody wears a tie at all – and everybody likes it. People approve of this because you can be the person you are, not try to look like a 90-year-old master you are not. Society has changed. The only thing that does not change is the music itself.’ He means this in a good way. Music remains his fixed star in a dizzying world. If he ever stops to unwind, he does so by staying home in New York or Beijing, eating light and healthy food, feeding his neighbour’s Koi carp and travelling to the Chinese mountains to sample freshly picked green tea.

He will doubtless continue to divide audiences but he may just be the classical music sphere’s biggest asset. ‘Classical music is not doing badly,’ he insists, ‘but music education is dying, disappearing from schools, so we have to be worried about the future. Instead of worrying, let’s take action! Let’s spend our energies in the public system, talk loudly about education and focus on what we can do for it. I don’t see any problems if we really put our minds to making a change.’

Coming the hour, cometh the Lang Lang. We need him, and we need him now.