Piano Extravaganza

Chinese star pianist Lang Lang showed just how down-to-earth he still is when he came to the Philharmonie in Berlin in May 2010: He held a workshop where he worked with no less than 100 piano students on Schubert's Marche militaire No. 1 - relaxed and entertaining, but still with full concentration.

Introducing young people to classical music is something that lies close to Lang Lang's heart, so much so that he has set up his own foundation whose purpose this is. "Through music, I want children to see a different dimension of life," said the pianist. "I want to show them how music can help them realize their dreams," is how he described what is also one of the aims of the education project Zukunft@BPhil, which organised the workshop in the Philharmonie. In his own Berlin project too, Lang Lang - who was Pianist in Residence with the Berliner Philharmoniker at the time - wanted not only to work on a piece of music, but also to convey a message: the joy of playing together and the energy that this brings.