Lang Lang - Las Vegas

According to Lang, his first exposure to western music was when he saw a Tom and Jerry cartoon with Tom playing The Cat Concerto (Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C-sharp minor composed by Franz Liszt) and this motivated him to study piano.

At the age of five he won the Shenyang Piano Competition and played his first public recital. He entered Beijing's Central Music Conservatory at nine and was awarded first prize for outstanding artistic performance at the Fourth International Young Pianists Competition in Germany. In 1995, at 13 he won first place at the Tchaikovsky International Young Musicians' Competition in Japan, playing Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra. At 14 he was a featured soloist at the China National Symphony's inaugural concert, which was broadcast by CCTV and attended by President Jiang Zemin.

Lang Lang's breakthrough came in 1999, when he was 17, with his last-minute substitution for an indisposed André Watts at the Ravinia Festival's "Gala of the Century" where he played Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In 2001 he made his Carnegie Hall debut with Yuri Temirkanov, traveled to Beijing with the Philadelphia Orchestra on a tour celebrating its 100th anniversary.

Lang Lang's performances have received much praise but also heavy criticism. His performance style has been referred to as having "soggy rhythms and heavy phrasing" and as being "truly boring', "just bad" and "unendurable." Critics who feel that his playing lacks sensitivity have given him the nickname "Bang Bang"