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Superstar classical pianist, Lang Lang, will return to the Royal Albert Hall in November for two headline concerts spotlighting the work of composer Camille Saint-Saëns.

The musician, currently being seen on Channel 4’s hit show The Piano, will be accompanied by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra as he performs two immortal Saint-Saëns works: the composer’s second piano concerto, and his Carnival of the Animals. The latter piece will also feature a second soloist: Lang Lang’s wife, fellow pianist Gina Alice.

Matthew Todd, Director of Programming at the Royal Albert Hall, said: “Lang Lang is one of the giants of the classical world: a unique performer whose prodigious talent has made him a worldwide sensation. These headline performances will see him take centre stage at the Hall, performing a pair of works that will show him at his incomparable best.”

Lang Lang. Credit: Haiqiang Lv

The concert will begin...

Ron Howard will direct a biopic on the life of Lang Lang, the world-renowned Chinese pianist about his journey from life in Northern China to making it to the Beijing Central Conservatory of Music and to international acclaim.

The untitled feature on Lang Lang will be fully financed by Stuart Ford’s AGC Studios and will be produced by Howard and Brian Grazer’s Imagine Entertainment. Michelle Mulroney and Kieran Mulroney wrote the screenplay based on Lang Lang’s own memoir co-written with David Ritz called “Journey of a Thousand Miles.”

At just 38 but someone who has been active since the early 1990s, the young concert pianist Lang Lang has played with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic and some of America’s top orchestras. His memoir charts his own childhood and shows how his family, both of them musicians whose careers in China’s insular classical music world never panned out,...

Imagine Entertainment’s Brian Grazer, Karen Lunder producing with AGC head Stuart Ford.

AGC Studios will fully finance and Ron Howard will direct an untitled biopic of the celebrated pianist Lang Lang from Imagine Entertainment.

Brian Grazer, Imagine Entertainment executive chairman, is producing with president of features Karen Lunder, and AGC Studios chairman and CEO Stuart Ford.

Michelle Mulroney and Kieran Mulroney wrote the screenplay based on the memoir Journey Of A Thousand Miles by Lang Lang and David Ritz. Lang Lang and Jean-Jacques Cesbron along with Polygram Entertainment’s Michele Anthony and David Blackman will serve as executive producers.

A major glossy magazine that used to be devoted largely to music -- but long ago fell under the spell of Hollywood celebrity -- still continues to cover music, specializing in listicles that seem designed mainly to provoke ire in those who care more about music than does said magazine (named after a classic blues song, in case you can't guess without a hint). This summer it unleashed a list of songs that, with that aging publication's ironically weak sense of history, managed to overlook the vast majority of the history of song. To put it bluntly, if you're claiming to discuss the best songs ever written and you don't even mention Franz Schubert, you're an ignoramus. My ire over this blinkered attitude towards music history festered for months, so I finally decided to do something about it by writing about some of the timeless songs omitted in the aforementioned myopic listicle.

Having given the history of the "New World" in Part I, it seems wise to preface Part II with some words about how the symphony is constructed. The movements are:

I. Adagio; Allegro molto II. Largo III. Scherzo: Molto vivace IV. Allegro con fuoco

Unusually, every movement starts with an introduction. The first movement's is the most famous: starts with a striking slow introduction that establishes the current of nostalgia for, or homesickness for, the composer's native Bohemia. Another reminder of this comes with the famotus flute solo -- or does it? Some have remarked on its similarity to "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," but this is not so much a quote as a paraphrase, so to speak; small bits of "Chariot" are elided into something new that mingles many flavors: African-America spiritual, yes, but also Native American music and Bohemian folk music, which share a pentatonic flavor.

Note that the...

Which music stars went home with awards at the 2014 Grammy Awards? Find out with this full winners list.

Winners in each category are bolded.

Record of the Year

"Get Lucky" -- Daft Punk feat. Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers

"Radioactive" -- Imagine Dragons

"Royals" -- Lorde

"Locked Out of Heaven" -- Bruno Mars

"Blurred Lines" -- Robin Thick feat. T.I. and Pharrell

Album of the year

"The Blessed Unrest" -- Sara Bareilles

"Random Access Memories" -- Daft Punk

"Good Kid, M.A.A.D City" -- Kendrick Lamar

"The Heist" -- Macklemore and Ryan Lewis

"Red" -- Taylor Swift

Song of the year

"Just Give Me a Reason" -- Jeff Bhasker, Pink and Nate Ruess (Pink feat. Nate Ruess)

"Locked Out of Heaven" -- Philip Lawrence, Ari Levine and Bruno Mars (Bruno Mars)

"Roar" -- Lukasz Gottwald, Max Martin, Bonnie McKee, Katy Perry and Henry Walter (Katy Perry)

"Royals...