Chinese-born classical pianist Lang Lang has been hailed as a genius - but it's all down to Tom and Jerry, he tells Arminta Wallace
'If he's not in his hotel in Zaragoza," the message says, "you'll probably get him on his German mobile." The hotel receptionist searches high and low, but he's not there. The mobile offers a disgruntled message that begins "Bitte schön . . ." and then dissolves into static. I decide to wait for 10 minutes and then start over. To pass the time I leaf, once more, through the biographical notes supplied by his agent. "International sensation," it reads. "Chinese wunderkind."
Also, "22-year-old whizz-kid", "electrifying energy", and much else besides. In the middle of the usual litany of orchestras and conductors he has performed with - Barenboim, Rattle, Mehta, Jansons, Gergiev, the Vienna Philharmonic, the Concertgebouw, the Chicago Symphony - it declares that a magazine called Teen People recently nominated him as one of the "Top 20 Teens Who Will Change the World". So how come he doesn't answer his phone? Hello? Hello?
"Yes, this is Lang Lang," says a cheery voice, barely audible amid a sea of static hiss, a fully-fledged conversation involving at least two other people and assorted traffic noises. It sounds as if he's in a car on a motorway. "Sorry about not answering just now," the voice continues. "No signal. I'm in a car on a highway."
Not driving, is he? "No, no - it's okay. I'm on my way to lunch. I'm in Spain and the food is amazing. I'm about to go to a place where we'll have a wonderful lunch. The famous Spanish ham." "Jamón," I volunteer. "Yeah, jamón. Are you Spanish?" "No, Irish," I say, looking at the rain streaming down the window and wishing I was in a taxi in Zaragoza. "Ah! Irish! You know, I'm living in Philadelphia and there are many, many Irish people there."
Did he just say Philadelphia? So much for biographical guff: it gave the distinct impression - thanks to the combination of German mobile number, exclusive recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon and the information that one of his CDs went straight into the German pop charts on release - that Lang Lang hangs out in Germany.
A surprisingly deep chuckle comes down the line. "No, no," he assures me. "I come to Germany very often, but I don't live there. I live in the airport, most of the time."
A whizz-kid in every sense, then. He will be touching down in Dublin on Wednesday to give a recital at the National Concert Hall. The programme is one of those bits-and-bobs affairs that resemble either a box of exquisite hand-made chocolates or a bag of assorted Chupa-Chups lollies, depending on your musical orientation. Sonatas by Mozart and Chopin; Rachmaninov preludes; Schumann's Kinderszenen; two slices of Liszt.
Lang Lang is unrepentant. It is, he says, made up of pieces that have meant a lot to him personally. "They are pieces that I played very early in my career - but then I stopped playing them," he explains. "Now I've relearned them again." One such is the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody No 2 - the piece that made him decide to be a pianist. Aged two. A toddler, living in the Chinese city of Shenyang. Is this true? "Yeah, the rhapsody," comes the fond reply from the car on the motorway. "That was the first piece I saw on television when Tom and Jerry were playing it together. I thought, 'Hey, if a cat can play like that, why can't I?'"
No doubt he went straight to the piano and learned it in seven minutes or so? "No, no, I didn't play it when I was a kid. Only to imitate the sound. Of course it's very hard." For other people, maybe? "Oh, please," he shoots back. "It's difficult for me, too."
Hmmm. Well, listening to the aforementioned CD - the one that shot into the German pop charts like a guided missile - it's hard to imagine that any piece of music could challenge Lang Lang's awesome technical abilities. A live recording of his debut recital at Carnegie Hall, it's a testament to the effervescent joy of his music-making: Schumann's Abegg Variations, Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy, Liszt's ferociously demanding Réminiscences de Don Juan. It too is a programme composed largely of musical fireworks - appropriately for a pianist who has had such a meteoric career path.
"BEGAN PIANO LESSONS," the sleeve notes declare, "at three . . . Gave his first recital two years later . . . At 13, performed all the Chopin Études in a single programme . . . His reputation spread so rapidly that a Chinese-language biography appeared before his 17th birthday."
His big moment in the West also came when he was 17. He was in Chicago to do an audition for a solo spot with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra when word came that Andre Watts, who was due to play the Tchaikovsky piano concerto with the orchestra, had taken ill. Lang Lang was drafted in as a last-minute substitute - and was hailed by the Chicago Tribune as "the biggest, most exciting keyboard talent encountered in many years". Having conquered Chicago, he proceeded to conquer the world.
But unlike most young classical prodigies, Lang Lang hasn't quite dissolved his ethnic origins into the great pot labelled "Western art music". Hence the appearance, on the Carnegie Hall programme, of the Chinese composer Tan Dun's Eight Memories in Watercolour alongside the more traditional warhorses of the piano repertoire. And there can't, surely, be many classical musicians who get their dad up on the Carnegie Hall stage for an encore based on a Chinese folk tune.
Lang snr is a professional player of the traditional Chinese bowed instrument known as the erhu - and to judge by the ecstatic applause captured with pinpoint digital accuracy on the CD, the Lang family duet can bring the house down.
AS THE SON of a traditional musician, though, why did Lang jnr take up Western classical music, rather than follow in his father's footsteps? "It's the piano," he explains. "Piano is the instrument in China now. Much more popular than all the Chinese instruments. In China you have the core classical, traditional folk sound - but at the same time, folk musicians play with pianists or Western orchestras, all that kind of thing."
And when he gives concerts of Western classical music in his home country they are, apparently, attended mainly by young people? "Yeah - all the young people come," he says. Not in the West, they don't. How come Chinese kids flock to classical concerts, when kids in the West avoid them like the plague? "It's . . ." A pause. "I dunno why," he admits. "But 112 million people study piano in China - so it's not hard to get them to come to concerts."
It's hard not to wish this young man wasn't on a mobile in a car on his way to lunch in Zaragoza. The frankness, the sense of humour, the enthusiasm - in person, he must be quite something. Small wonder that Lang Lang has been made a Unicef goodwill ambassador, the youngest celebrity to be recognised in this way. "This, I think, is more important than being a pianist," he says. "When you take your profession into much broader areas - into education, health for the children. I think it's way beyond being a pianist. Much better." Last year he went to visit kids suffering from malaria in Tanzania. This year, he says, he's going to focus on the Asian Aids problem.
He has brought the same passion and energy to the sedate halls of classical music. Audiences, not surprisingly, adore him. So do many of the critics. Not all. But critical reservations tend to centre on a lack of interpretative profundity - which seems a bit harsh, given his age. Who is profound at 22? Take those pieces he's playing in Dublin: the ones he learned early in his career, set aside, and has now revisited. Does he play them differently these days? "Oh, yeah, I think so," he says. "I think the experience I've had for all those years . . . of course it's different." All those years. All, what, 10 of them? And he hasn't had much time, over the past five of those, for contemplation, introspection or meditation.
"Yeah, it's been unbelievable," he says. "Quite exciting - and also, sometimes, it can be very tiring. But when you sit down on the piano bench, then everything is great again." He is, he adds without prompting, really looking forward to playing in Dublin for the second time.
The traffic noises have embarked on an alarming crescendo. Lang Lang's car has clearly arrived at its destination. Now, I don't want to stand between a man and his jamón - but I do want to know about his name. "What it means?" he guesses. Um, not exactly. Actually I want to know whether he has been named after a perfume. Silence at the other end of the line. "What?" Uh-oh. Me and my big mouth.
"Ah, yeah, I know about this," he suddenly exclaims. "It's spelled y-l-a-n-g, right?" It is? "Ah, yeah. No. Nothing to do with that. I mean, I hope I smell good - but it has nothing to do with my name." Which means "very brilliant", doesn't it? "Nah," he corrects. "Not very brilliant. Brilliant. It's enough."
It is, too.
Lang Lang will play the National Concert Hall, Dublin, on Wednesday at 8pm. See www.langlang.com