As I write this, it’s just over a week until the start of the 2008 Olympics. Pianist Lang Lang is possibly in a position to become even more famous than he already is, according to David Remnick’s article in the August 4 issue of The New Yorker. Meanwhile, the official announcement just came in two days ago (more about that timing in a moment) of a major Beijing music event set to take place during the Olympics, called Divas in Beijing. read more
I just got back from Steinway Hall, down the street from Carnegie Hall, where the pianist Lang Lang made a lunchtime appearance while in town for a free Central Park concert with the New York Philharmonic.
The ever-bouncy Lang Lang arrived in jeans, black-and-white jersey, and trademarked spiky hair about 20 minutes late, straight from a Philharmonic rehearsal. People crammed into the small main rotunda, with its beautiful Italian crystal and Greek marble, built in 1925 by the Warren and Wetmore firm, the same folks who built Grand Central Station. The rotunda holds about 300 people, many of whom were holding cell phones in the air to take Lang Lang’s photo as he entered. There were young students (many of them Asian) accompanied by their parents, plus the usual New Yorkers who show up at these sorts of things, which is to say veteran arts-lovers, office workers on lunch break, and music-industry people.
By the standards of the classical-music world, Lang Lang is a superstar. read more
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