Sean Rafferty at Home with Lang Lang

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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

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Sean Rafferty at Home

Factual: Life Stories

Music: Classical

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Sean Rafferty visits musicians at home and at work to learn about their lives and music

Sean Rafferty visits leading musicians at home and at work to learn about their lives and music

Sean Rafferty at Home: At the piano with Lang Lang

At the piano with Lang Lang

BBC Radio 3 - Sean Rafferty at Home, At the piano with Lang Lang

Sean visits Lang Lang in Amsterdam to discover his life on the road.

Sean visits Lang Lang at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam to discover his life on the road.

Sean Rafferty travels to Holland to meet the international pianist Lang Lang and finds him very much at home seated, of course, by the piano; this time at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. Lang Lang takes a break from his busy tour schedule to give Sean a mini-masterclass on Beethoven’s Für Elise. They talk about Lang Lang’s passions and how his excitement for Tom and Jerry cartoons and Franz Liszt provided the catalyst for a young and determined pianist growing up in China. 

Lang Lang began playing the piano at the age of three.  He won the Shenyang Competition and gave his first public recital at five, before entering Beijing’s Central Music Conservatory aged nine. Lang Lang talks about difficult childhood times, practising for endless hours each day and night and about how he became an overnight sensation at seventeen when he stood in at short notice to play Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Today Lang Lang is spending a lot of his time immersing himself in the music of Beethoven, he demonstrates to Sean how he is exploring his technique as he prepares to play the concertos and record the piano sonatas. When on tour Lang Lang always visits the city’s museums and galleries.  He is inspired by colour and today Sean and Lang Lang take time to stand in front of ‘Sunflowers’ at the Museum Van Gogh - Lang Lang is transported and immediately his mind turns to music and Schumann ...

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

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Sean Rafferty at Home

At the piano with Lang Lang

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