Van Wezel Presents Lang Lang & Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra 3/30

Classical piano superstar Lang Lang accompanies the renowned Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra in its first tour of the United States with conductor Christoph Eschenbach on Tuesday, Mar. 30 at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall.

The scheduled program includes Symphony No. 1 (Classique) in D Major, Op. 25 (Prokofiev); Piano concerto No. 3 in C Major, Op. 26 (Prokofiev) and Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73 (Brahms).
Tickets to the concert are $70-$110 (with a limited number of "smart seats" priced at $30).
"The hottest artist on the classical music planet may well be the Chinese pianist Lang Lang," raved The New York Times. The Chicago Tribune added,
"There will be no stopping this nonchalant dervish of the keyboard . . .his playing was so raptly beautiful that one was afraid to breathe for fear of missing anything."

In 2009, Lang Lang appeared in Time magazine's annual list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. Over 5 billion people viewed his performance . . . in Beijing's opening ceremony for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, where he was seen as a symbol of the youth and future of China. This status has inspired over 40 million Chinese children to learn to play classical piano - a phenomenon coined by The Today Show as "the Lang Lang effect."

The Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra is comprised of the world's finest young musicians under the age of 27, hand-picked through a rigorous auditioning process. "The power, brilliance and expressiveness of this orchestra is awe-inspiring," wrote Berliner Zeitung.
Maestro Eschenbach has been Principal Conductor of the SHMF International Orchestral Academy since 2004. His long-standing artistic and personal friendship with Lang Lang has led to numerous memorable performances, most recently with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in November 2008, and a critically acclaimed recording of Beethoven Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 4 with Orchestre de Paris in 2007.

The concert at the Van Wezel is sponsored by WUSF.

For more information and to buy tickets, contact the Van Wezel Box Office at 941- 953-3368 or log onto www.vanwezel.org. Dinner is available prior to most shows by Michael's on East at the Van Wezel by calling (941) 366-0007 or logging onto www.bestfood.com.

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