Roll Over Beethoven

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If you want to be an overnight sensation in classical music these days, you'd best look the part. You can be moodily romantic like long-haired Argentinian guitarist Dominic Miller (signed up by BBC Worldwide to launch their Inversion label), sulkily sexy like the all-girl string quartet Bond (2 million albums sold and counting). Skittishly sexy is also fine, a la Myleene Klass, the English Popstars siren turned classical pianist (also signed by Universal, reportedly for €1.4 million-plus). Smoldering sulkiness is equally bankable, as bad-boy Croatian pianist Maksim is finding out (EMI has signed him for five albums). Even a rap persona can work, as demonstrated by "Tony Henry," the new name of once-legit operatic tenor Anthony Garfield Henry, now reborn and rehyped as the €4.3 million contracted "P. Diddy of opera."

Judging by this crowd, you might think the entire classical-music world is becoming more and more pop: dominated by production-line performers who fit the latest high-selling stereotype. And to some extent it's true. Many record execs, understandably excited by the high sales figures of acts such as tenor Russell "The Voice" Watson and teen soprano Charlotte Church, now place their bets on musicians with broad commercial potential — the chance to earn big numbers swiftly. So they throw seven-figure contracts and vast marketing budgets at those who can best ape the pop stars.

What they forget, of course, is that serious, carefully nurtured and developed classical stars may not yield immediate pop-size receipts, but can have an international shelf life of decades. Richard Lyttleton, president of classics and jazz for EMI International, points to the example of superstar conductor Simon Rattle: "For 15 years we carried a debit balance on his recordings." During those years management consultants repeatedly told Lyttleton to drop Rattle; Lyttleton had to threaten to resign to protect the conductor. His loyalty and patience paid off; these days Rattle's albums are all but guaranteed to make the classical Top 10 charts. "If you spend a long time building promising talents," says Lyttleton, "you increase your chances that they'll pay off for a long time."

You're not saying you're the best musician in the room, just that you know how to do your job. — DANIEL HARDING

Twenty years after Rattle's emergence, there are fewer opportunities for mainstream classical artists to build big careers. But there are still ways. Competitions, famous mentors, and serious but well- promoted labels like EMI's Debut series prevent crossovers from completely crowding out serious talent. And every so often someone with that indefinable touch of brilliance comes along. Time has chosen three new sensations from the current crop: twentysomethings with the interpretive insight, technique and, yes, charisma to sell records for the next 50 years — and become truly great artists along the way.

Lang Lang, 21, China.
Lang Lang plays table football the same way he plays piano: irrepressibly. He spins his players upside down in absurdly impossible acrobatics, the ball shoots everywhere, occasionally leaving the table altogether and hitting passers-by on the head. At this year's Verbier Festival in Switzerland, where audiences and performers mingle in the local bars, I found myself facing off against the Chinese boy wonder's unique brand of uncompromising passion. For the record, he lost. Then again, only two hours before, he'd played the most exciting performance of Rachmaninoff's famously challenging Piano Concerto No. 3 I'd ever attended. So he could be forgiven for letting his football skills dip.

Lang Lang is already a veteran. He's been studying his instrument since joining the Liaoning-based Shenyang Conservatory of Music at the age of 3, made his professional debut at 13, and grabbed attention in America in 1999, when his last-minute substitution in "Gala of the Century" in Ravinia with the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 brought the audience to its feet. "It was," says Lang Lang, "the moment of my dreams." In China he's played for former President Jiang Ze-Min, been the subject of a best-selling biography, and is recognized on the streets. Now that success is spreading to the West. He's onto his second record contract, having just been snapped up by Deutsche Grammophon, which recently released his recordings of Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn concertos. In July he was given the honor of opening the BBC Proms in London with a nationally televised concert. A few days later, he played on Good Morning America, and as a result, his Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn album made No. 1 on Amazon.com's "Movers and Shakers" list for the biggest leap in sales.

Hearing Lang Lang on disc is gratifying, but you have to see him — even in the most fiendishly difficult passages he hardly even looks at the keyboard, his eyes searching out orchestra members to visibly join in the joy or pain of making music, or looking roof-wards as he rides the passion. "I always study the score carefully," says Lang Lang. "When I start to play, my mind remembers the theory, but my heart starts a journey. I straddle both the composer's world and my own. When I can successfully merge the two, that's when the magic happens."

His goal: to use his fame to build a cultural bridge between East and West, playing Chinese music to Western audiences and vice versa. "The West is hungry now for Chinese culture — like the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with its music by Tan Dun," he says. "And in China, young people are devouring Shakespeare. Music moves people so deeply, it can really make them feel differently about each other."

Official Website: www.langlang.com