Lang Lang

More than living up to the Mandarin meaning of his name, “brilliant man”, Lang Lang has not only shot to international fame in a breathtakingly short time but also single-handedly put China on the western classical music map. Exuberant, direct and openly emotional in performance, he excels in the virtuoso repertoire of Liszt and Rachmaninov – the sort of keyboard fireworks once associated with pianists like Horowitz – but also concentrates on the more contained pianism of Mozart and Schumann and regularly peppers his recital programmes with Chinese pieces (his father, his first teacher, is a player of traditional Chinese music).