It’s the same as when you play a recital,” the superstar pianist Lang Lang is telling me as he explains his approach to ordering dinner. “You have a few incredible composers and you put them together and it’s like a menu. You have Bach and Ravel, Beethoven and Prokofiev, and it’s like you are serving a four-course or five-course dinner.”
Few pianists are more passionate about the four-or-five-course dinner than the musical phenomenon who was born in 1982 in Shenyang, the largest city in northeastern China. Lang Lang admits that often the first thing he does upon arriving somewhere new is seek recommendations for the finest Chinese restaurant. “Good food always inspires me,” he says. “I think certain tastes actually make you play piano better, make it more enjoyable.”
His attitude to eating well seems to follow the principle of yin and yang, the Confucian philosophy at the heart of Chinese culture that, when applied to food, aims for balance in colours, tastes and textures. “Like in music, it’s very important to have a balanced style when you eat,” he suggests. “Meat makes people more aggressive; vegetables make you more relaxed. So variety is ideal. When I eat, I like to have a lot of different combinations, a taste of everything. It’s the same as when I play.”