Lang Lang is now a Mickey Mouse ambassador
NewsThe Chinese pianist said yesterday that ‘every musician is an ambassador for their own culture.’
He was speaking at Steinway in Manhattan after playing a Disney cartoon piano.
Words fail.
Read here.
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If there’s one culture that actually takes western classical music seriously in the 21st century, it’s China.
China has co-opted western classical music enormously. Presumably because of the desire to be “aspirational.”
But China churns out the pianists and fiddle players of the future, builds a new opera house every week.
(More than can be said for the (English speaking) West, where classical music is more of an inconvenient embarrassment, as evidenced by the cultural vacuum being generated in the UK by current policy….)
So – Chinese culture is currently interested in, celebrates, and invests in classical music. Ergo, Lang Lang is an ambassador for Chinese culture.
Not just China, but most of East Asia embraces Western classical music. The future of the art lies here.
Yes, this is quite correct and it has nothing to do with the Chinese desire to be ‘aspirational’. There are plenty of alternatives if you just want to do that. Such condescension would not fall upon appreciative ears of Chinese (or Asian) musicians; they work just as hard as their European counterparts and they’re succeeding spectacularly!!
Thank goodness for that!! The western world has grown effete and decadent and the Asians know it!
Stokowski shook Mickey’s hand, but that’s as far as it went. But conjoining MM with LL seems totally appropriate.
More power to him. Most classical musicians could only dream of making the kind of money he does. With a young kid to support, he’s doing the right thing.
Yes, we all wish we had more money to raise a “kid”. Sensitive moniker, isn’t it.
Great…finally a piano that’s as tacky as LL’s artistry (not that there ever was one) and personality.
When words fail, money speaks.
Lang Lang and his handlers are obviously desperate. When his artistry can’t captivate and cultivate a following, they turn to “cheap stunts”, believing that by him playing a Disney cartoon character piano and becoming an “Ambassador” for Mickey Mouse that he will attract a new following and magnify his image.
They are wasting their time. All of these stunts are ephemeral and will be of short duration. By doing what he and they are doing it will only assure that Lang Lang will end up in the pantheon of the ridiculous and he himself will be reduced to one of the cartoon characters that he seems to love to embrace, with the only difference being that Mickey Mouse is timeless, whereas Lang Lang won’t be. What will Lang Lang do in ten years, when he is approaching his mid 50’s? Will he continue to gravitate towards this same sort of naive and childish communication…a chubby middle aged man embracing Mickey and other cartoon characters, playing on a cartoon piano, believing that in so doing he will create a unique legacy alongside past and present piano giants? I seriously doubt it. It is all very very sad. If his talent and career had been managed intelligently, with a long-term view and strategy, we wouldn’t be witnessing this pathetic circus.
In his post C.T. assumes that LL actually wanted his career managed “intelligently”. The fact is that his career is going exactly as he desired. When he cut the cord with Edna Landau and IMG Artists which had nurtured his career and got him his first big break, he informed her he was moving to CAMI because it had promised to make him a world star. Ms Landau could not do that because she was too “old fashioned” – a ridiculous comment about a much admired artists manager. That has been LL’s ambition from the outset. As a Mickey Mouse Ambassador he will be far better known worldwide than as a declining classical pianist.
It was Earl Blackburn who brought Lang Lang to IMG and launched his career. Edna Landau took over LL when Blackburn moved on to ICM Artists. CAMI’s attraction for LL was their offer to enhance his image with product endorsements and other out-of-the-box promotional events which weren’t in IMG’s vocabulary.
The Walt Disney corporation is ranked 48 on the Fortune 100, above Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Boeing, General Electric, IBM…
We should be so lucky to have a deal with Disney, Goldman Sachs would certainly love to be their banker, so why should Lang Lang be embarrassed?
The question isn’t why Disney, but why Lang Lang?
My only question is: Have the Chinese flocked to Disney products since Lang Lang became “ambassador”? I doubt it, the Chinese economy has tanked and will take decades to recover.
That last sentence is the only one you need worry about; internal unrest will cause the CCP to look offshore to distract its people and this won’t be pretty for anybody.
Taking Lang Lang seriously becomes increasingly challenging with each passing day.
Cousin Gilda: ‘I have no words… I’m shocked… I…’
Billy: ‘Don’t be so sad, Gilda, I’m sure that it is not a Steinway piano in the photo…I hope…’
Of course, the Chinese now own Bösendorfer.
Cousin Gilda: ‘Nooooooo!’
Not the Chinese, but the Japanese (Yamaha), dear Sue Sonata Form.
Posts like this are case and point about classical music’s self-hating problem.
Blending popular culture with classical does help bring in new classical listeners. Famous conductors going back to Stokowski keenly understood this and embraced it.
The constant crapping on Lang Lang by Norman and posters here reminds me of what you all did with John Williams. When major orchestras, notably the Vienna Philharmonic, began inviting him to conduct film music excerpts, everyone went into attack mode, bemoaning how orchestra management was forcing the orchestras to play fluffy music to make a quick buck. But then when it became clear how eager the musicians were to play Williams’ music under his baton, practically overnight the criticism went to praise. My point is that even the musicians are not as conservative as the critics in their assessment of what musicians should be performing (and how they dress); maybe you should listen to the musicians more.
Invitations to certain artists in private self-funding orchestras, such as the Wiener Philharmoniker, often serve as a means to boost revenue by appealing to audiences who prefer recognizable names from non-musical media. Lang Lang (scheduled to perform during the Philharmoniker tour in Asia next month) and John Williams (and his one-off-concert at the Musikverein) fall into this category of artists. Their presence, much like the New Year’s Concert, is primarily driven by financial considerations, not artistic.
Financial considerations may have been the motive behind booking Williams, but by all accounts, Wiener Philharmoniker musicians — as well as musicians at other orchestras — were thrilled to work with him, lining up for autographs and making programming requests.
US Americans often assume that the entire world is loves John Williams and regards him as a great living artist. #notthecase
Nonsense statement that you’d be hard pressed to back up with real evidence. I would guess (no real evidence) that most Americans don’t know who John Williams is, even if some of them have seen a movie that he has scored. Many who are knowledgeable of his music and contribution to films would agree that he is a great living artist, regardless of their nationality. Congratulations on combining an anti-John-Williams post with an anti-American post.
The sound of the clutching of pearls is deafening.
Ah, but isn’t it wonderful to be able to afford pearls to clutch!!?? They never go out of fashion.
I recall a globe-trotting reporter saying there were three things that were universal, things that everyone recognized no matter where he went…
“OK”
Coca-Cola
Mickey Mouse
Never went to Poland, then. Nobody I met there had any sense of hat “okay” meant.
Forbes article complains it is “ubiquitous”…
https://www.forbes.com/sites/joharper/2018/11/29/why-the-word-ok-should-be-banned-in-poland/?sh=6c3f70997817
I don’t read the critics.
Based solely on my personal experience of Lang Lang’s concerts, his Schubert sonata and Goldberg Variations were nauseating enough to be called a Mickey Mouse job.
To all the peasant comments here, Lang Lang is slated to perform 10 concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic next month, your opinion really does not matter.
He was hired for his ticket-selling skills, not his artistry.
For an Asian tour.
Can someone explain why Lang Lang performing his own transcriptions of popular music is so different from Liszt doing exactly the same thing?
If you don’t know we’re not going to tell you.
And that answer, folks, shows why classical music is (sadly) regarded by normal people as an exclusive club for the would-be elite.
A long way from where he was in 2007, performing Bartok under the baton of Pierre Boulez.
I expect he’s experiencing the pressure of simply too much high-class competition. “They” always say that competition makes things ‘cheaper’ for us!!
Haters gonna hate! Keep it going, LL, taking great music to millions who would never otherwise experience it!
Having heard L.L. 3xs over the years, I have found it difficult to take his perfotmances seriously even when he is bring serious. He always resorts to theatrics and amateur behavior.
Lang Lang and Yundi Li used to be serious artists before pop culture bought them out.
In the headline to this thread, is Micky Mouse a bipartite adjective or a noun?
Oh, why can’t Lang Lang have some fun?
Even the masters of the past did some commercial stuff, but it doesn’t take away from the music. Lang Lang is just a happy human being, earning a living the best way he can.
That role is quite appropriate for talent.
As Sandra Bernhard used to say “Have you seen the paycheck?”
Pretty funny to read how the Chinese have some sort of special relation to classical music. In half a century China too will be hosting a weekly comedy sketch program from one of those stages built for classical music, the latter will in turn be heard primarily accompanying villains in entertainment media. They are just playing catch-up.
He’s extremely good. Famous too.
The piano and its marketing comes from Steinway, not LL.
His level of taste is now utterly clear for the world to see.