Debut of an Odd Couple

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When he was setting the Parisian music world abuzz with his precocious piano playing in the 1840s, the young Camille Saint-Saens was taken to play for the great Hector Berlioz. Saint-Saens, with an aplomb beyond his years, dashed off a dazzling keyboard display. "All he lacks," announced Berlioz, "is inexperience."

Aficionados had much the same reaction to two sophisticated young pianists who made New York City debuts last week. One was jazzman Matt Savage, who led his trio through a swinging, bop-tinged evening at Manhattan's Blue Note. His sets ranged from the standard My Favorite Things to originals like Groovin' on Mount Everest. He traced melodies simply, sometimes decorating them with trills, and shifted between softly gliding passages and furious fantasias with his arms whipping up and down the keyboard, using even his fist to bang out a climactic chord. "Scary," marveled jazz pianist D.D. Jackson, who was in the Blue Note audience. So it was, especially for a performer who was up well past his bed-time and who could barely reach the pedals with his favorite blue sneakers. Savage is 11 years old.

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His age and size, however, are the least of his challenges. As a 3-year-old in Sudbury, Mass., Savage was diagnosed as autistic. He had odd obsessions (license plates, for one), was terrified of loud noises and wouldn't play with other children. His mother, who manages his career, and father feel that since starting piano lessons at 6 and teaching himself jazz, he has made huge strides emotionally. Since 1998, he has played more than 50 concerts and released five CDs. Today his busy, multi-track mind teems with advanced knowledge of everything from geography and math to sports statistics. "Autism," he says, "is like a huge wall, and if you reach the top of it, you're on your way."

A different kind of barrier had to be surmounted by last week's other premiering pianist, the Chinese virtuoso Lang Lang, 21, who made his recital bow at Carnegie Hall. Helped by his parents' heroic scrimping, Lang Lang overcame poverty in the city of Shenyang, which had only one dusty Steinway. His father gave up his job as a policeman to take the 8-year-old Lang Lang to Beijing for a year and a half of arduous preparations for the Central Conservatory. At 15, after winning two international competitions, the prodigy made the leap to Philadelphia's Curtis Institute. By the time he stepped in for an ailing Andre Watts at Chicago's Ravinia Festival in 1999, the classical establishment was ready to embrace him as a new Evgeny Kissin or even Van Cliburn: a fresh personality with a staggering technique and an engagingly soulful temperament.

At his Carnegie recital, Lang Lang flung himself mostly into the Romantic repertory — Schumann, Chopin, Liszt. A flamboyant performer who emotes and sways as he plays (too much, say purists), he delivers pyrotechnics as well as artistry. The question for his future is how well the former will come to serve the latter. For now, with a best-selling CD behind him and three solid years of bookings ahead, he just enjoys showing his flair. Onstage, he eschews tails for a traditional Chinese jacket, and offstage he favors Armani and Versace. "People think of classical musicians as too serious, too boring," he says. "We can be as cool as Michael Jackson." Indeed, just as Matt Savage craves hair-raising roller-coaster rides, Lang Lang retains his childhood love of comic books and TV cartoons. Perhaps both pianists have a healthy streak of inexperience after all.