Chinese pianist Lang Lang agrees to performance, webcast with Detroit Symphony Orchestra

DETROIT – Superstar Chinese pianist Lang Lang will join the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for his first live webcast with a U.S. orchestra.

The orchestra was to announce the Sept. 28 concert Friday. The one-night performance featuring Sergei Prokofiev’s “Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Major” can be viewed on the orchestra’s website and its free “DSO to Go” mobile app.

Lang came to the U.S. in 1997 as a 15-year-old prodigy from provincial China and has since performed across the globe.

The performance is part of a three-week series of Chinese-related programming by the orchestra. The group kicks off its classical season Oct. 4 with the world premiere of a violin concerto by Bright Sheng, a Chinese composer, and the following weekend, Chinese-American pianist Conrad Tao will perform Beethoven’s “Piano Concerto No. 1.”

The series grew out of relationships the orchestra’s management and members have cultivated with China’s Central Conservatory of Music, according to Erik Ronmark, the Detroit ensemble’s artistic administrator.

Christopher Stager, a marketing consultant for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and the Central Conservatory’s Beijing Modern Music Festival, also credits the efforts of the orchestra’s music director, Leonard Slatkin.

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