Rock-star glitz for the classics

This may be flirting with madness, but let's take a speculative tour through the mind of Lang Lang.

The 29-year-old Chinese pianist is again opening new vistas of classical music stardom with his appearance last month at the ultra-hip, predominantly pop iTunes Festival in London - just the latest nonclassical venue he's explored.

It was inevitable. His hair and clothes have made him look like a rock star for years, and now he performs alongside them, in this case with classical repertoire by a man who's often called the original rock star, Franz Liszt. If you were Lang Lang and asked to be in such a visible forum - you can see it on iTunes if you have a properly up-to-date Mac - would you say yes? And would you dress in the appropriate fantastical fashion for the occasion? If Lang Lang had answered "no" to either question, he wouldn't be Lang Lang, he'd be the prodigiously talented and bland classical pianist Yundi (formerly Yundi Li), who doesn't play such gigs because he isn't interesting enough to pull them off.

The face of classical music has been changing for awhile, and Lang Lang has had a significant hand in that ever since he left the Curtis Institute of Music nearly a decade ago. But it's all getting so extreme, some might say classical music is turning into its own slutwalk, with artists seizing upon every possible media outlet, and looking as provocative as possible.

Lang Lang's 24-year-old Curtis classmate, Yuja Wang, made jaws drop with a microdress she wore onstage at the Hollywood Bowl last week with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (whose music director, Gustavo Dudamel, was just announced as a guest star on a forthcoming segment of Sesame Street). Longtime Wang watchers couldn't have been surprised - her rehearsal garb with the Philadelphia Orchestra once led an onlooker to remark, "Boy, that streetwalker can really play." Similarly, the often-shirtless baritone Nathan Gunn inspires the thought, "That personal trainer can really sing."