Switched on Pop - A piano lesson that will change how you listen (ft. Lang Lang)

Episode Date: August 11, 2026

For many people – including Charlie and Nate – studying classical piano as a child always felt like a chore. Now, as adults, there’s a newfound appreciation for classical music, but the art form isn’t always accessible. One of the people trying to change that is the world-renowned pianist Lang Lang, classical piano’s greatest interpreter. On this episode of Switched on Pop, Charlie sits down with Lang Lang at the Steinway showroom in New York City to see how taste changes over time, the different ways a master pianist can interpret a work, and ultimately, why classical music is still important. CREDITS  Reanna Cruz: Producer  Iris Gottlieb: Illustrator  Charlie Harding: Host, Executive Producer  Dion Lee: Art Director  Brandon McFarland: Audio Engineer  Nick Ripps: Video Editor  Nate Sloan: Host  Lissa Soep: Editor  Zach Tenorio & Jocie Adams: Theme Composers  Switched On Pop is a co-production of Vox Media Podcast Network, Vulture, and Rock Ridge Productions. Links: ⁠⁠Newsletter⁠⁠  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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This week on Explain It to Me, how to make the most of that precious PTO. New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Switchdown Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. Do you remember the first piano piece that you had to perform in a recital? Wow. You're really taking me back to a very fragile time in my life, Charlie.

But, I mean, I won't say it's the first, but certainly one of the earliest pieces I remember playing is the Johann Sebastian. Bacchen Bach C major prelude from the well-tempered clavier. That one? That's the one. How old are you? I mean, I started playing when I was five, I think, six, something like that. What was your relationship to it when you started? Who were you studying with?

So I loved piano, and eventually I started doing this program at the Harlem School of the Arts with a really strict Russian lady who would wrap my knuckles with a plastic allegation. any time I made a mistake. She had all these, like, pictures of the great Slavic pianist, Stanislav Richter, all over her office, the way that some teenagers might have pictures of, like, Justin Bieber. And I didn't really love playing classical music.

It felt like a chore and, like, it was like a labor, you know? I feel like I studied classical piano for a year when I was a kid. It's like a lot of people start and then quickly stop. It's a rite of passage. What stopped you? Well, I was kind of fed up. I really wanted to jam. I wanted to bach out, you know, as it were.

And my parents knew I was a little dissatisfied. And they said, you can stop playing piano or you can start taking jazz lessons. And I was like, what did jazz you say? Let's do it. Well, I started taking jazz lessons. I started to improvise. I started to, you know, make my own music. I never looked back. I rediscovered that love of music. You're a jazz scholar. What's your relationship to classical music today? Well, now, Charlie, I'm filled with rue and regret. Because all I want to do now is to be able to play Chopin and Beethoven. Counterpoint. And I can't. I mean, I love, now I love taking out classical music and working my way through it. I feel like I have the patient. in the maturity now to rock with that. So you want more classical music in your life. Is classical music popular music?

Classical music is popular music. It's just that most people don't know it. Because classical music has kind of a, what is it, a stuffiness problem, maybe. The stereotype of classical, right, is like it's sophisticated, it's fancy, it's elegant, you have to dress up to go see a classical concert. I think classical music is,

is pop music, it just needs people who are able to convey it in that way. And I think that's what the greatest classical musicians do. They make it pop. They make it accessible. They make it understandable. They make it down to earth. They make these composers into like real people who walked to the earth and had their stuff that they were dealing with every day.

This is really cool because I feel like there's probably no better performer in the world of classical music than Long Long, who is so excellent at making classical music available to everybody through his fantastic piano book series where he takes the best piano pieces like the ones you were studying as a kid and very complex ones and makes them puts them all together, curates them so that it's like, oh yeah, that is the piano music that I love. Long Long is one of the great interpreters of classical piano. He plays all around the world. He's worked with the best orchestras. He has recorded the most beautiful, the most complex, the most emotionally potent classical piano pieces. I got to sit down with Long Long at the

Steinway showroom in New York City to see why classical music is still so important. And most importantly, he helped me sort of undo maybe my early premonitions about what classical piano needed to be from when I gave it up years ago like yourself. So here's my conversation with Long Long Long, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it. Pleasure. Thank you. So for non-classical listeners, I feel like sometimes it can be hard to understand how a pianist will interpret what work. I was wondering. if you could give me an example of like a musical phrase in something well known, something that, you know, is just deep in your bones and show maybe how we could play it three different

ways, how you might go about interpreting it. I mean, musically, there's certain style you have to follow, let's say if it's a Mozart piece. Like, you have to have this very elegancy, right? Yeah, but of course you can be a little bit more. short, like and or you can be more like whispering, you know. So, so about, I mean, you have to follow certain ways of style, this

elegancy, right? But then after that, you can do some kind of a different texture, colors, dynamics, articulations, and just like a painter, you know, It depends on the mood. You make it more heavy, softer, further, closer, you know, that's your choice. Right.

Okay, so I'm primarily a guitar player. We are very lucky as guitar players. We get to bend notes. We have a vibrato. Right. We can hammer on things. Pull away. All this kind of stuff.

My feeling of piano is like, I can go on and off. And yet, what you just demonstrated there, there's just so much expressivity. Yeah. Could you break down how you think about a single note, like how you can approach a note and get a different sound out of, out of, that note. Piano is a combination of everything. So in a way that if you only play single note,

then is limited. Not like guitar or violin, you can do vibrato, you can make the notes as long as you want. But piano, you need to use the harmony to make it big. For example, like, if you play only that's very limited

you know you have to know how you play with the the waves of the harmonies when you're approaching a work that you're going to interpret how do you prepare look if I want to just play something simple and fast react I mean I can just

side rate something and second time it shoots already arrive to a certain level of performance. But if I really want to record or to make it convincing to myself, to my colleagues, to the audience, then I need some work. I need to memorize everything.

I need to break down the details. And then I also need a little bit time to wind it, you know, to make sure it's not like a raw material. It has to be thought after, digested. Yeah. Like a good, good mind, you know, it just take

a few months or few years, but few months should be enough, actually. So, I mean, you just gave me multiple examples of approaching Mozart. When you're doing your version in a given moment, say you're preparing for a concert or a recording and you're going to make your interpretation of it. Is you're going through and learning it and practicing it,

are you, is the way that you're approaching phrasing? Is it a logical, deliberate process? Is it a very intuitive kind of process? How do you go about finding like, this is how I want to communicate that phrase? You just showed us many different phrases of Mozart as an example. Right.

I mean, you have a kind of certain goals to achieve, like how you count the bars, you know, how you shape the music and how you put everything together and where's the highlighting places, you know, but, you know, in the end of the day,

you don't think too much. I mean, I, when I perform, it's, it's need to have this genuine, spontaneous way of expressing music. If everything is calculated,

it's very bad. Yeah, it's just, you know, then it's not music anymore. It's a, it's a pure philosophy or pure mathematics.

You know, there's nothing wrong, but I mean, every night there should be something different. Every performance of the same piece is going to have a different experience. It should be like fresh energy, fresh music, just come out. Like, as an interpreter, you have to have this first time approach. What do you need to do to get your mindset ready to be able to be in that pure place of, letting whatever is going to happen in that moment. You have to be very relaxed before the concert, and you have to set up the right mood.

So not overexcited or too depressed. You know, it has to have the right balance. So I normally take a nap before. So, and then right before on stage, I eat bananas and chocolate. Yeah, it feels better. It just feels more smooth. I try the banana and chocolate method before an interview next time.

Yeah, it does change a lot. I mean, especially if you have performance every day, it's really, really helping. So you started playing piano as a very young child. What were your motivations for playing piano then and what are they today? I was always felt there's interesting things which I can express myself. in the music. So piano always became my best friend

in a very early stage. But in the same time, when I practice too much, it's also very, very painful. You know, it's, I mean, mentally, it's just too much, you know. So, yeah, so I would say

80% of the time I enjoyed it. And then 20% is like try to escape but I have to sit there to exercise. You're often playing music that's often very challenging, quite acrobatic, very expressive, but it sounds like you have an awareness of how the audiences experience it as you're playing it.

Yeah, yeah. I don't know what they feel in the same time, but I know that if I had this wonderful emotional appeal to the piano, I'm sure they will find it. They will feel the same. So you perform music from all eras, many different styles. I'm wondering if there are any composers that you feel like are particularly aligned with just your inner temperament.

Yeah, it depends on the different age. When I was a kid, I felt very close to Japan, List, and Tchaikovsky. And now I feel very close to Mozart, Beethoven, and And I'm, of course, I still like the Chikovsky-Shopin list, but I mean, I just felt the ones I felt really difficult as a kid, it's much easier to play now. Why that change?

Life experience, and also I have learned a lot on stage and off stage as a musician, as a human being, you know, and so it's much easier to get into some mood or some poetic theme. Could you give me an example of a piece of piano music that maybe looks difficult but is actually easy and then maybe the opposite, something that looks easy but is actually fairly difficult to play? We're only talking about relatively, right?

Sure. It's nothing really, it's difficult. Maybe it looks even more difficult, but it's, you know, for example, for example, pieces like this kind of thing, I mean, it's actually not that difficult, but, but, but, but, look, it is difficult, but if you practice, if you know how you use your energy, how you use your elbow and finger, it's actually not as difficult visually to see those things, right? Yeah, the opposite, something that sort of maybe looks easy, but actually requires a lot of attention. Sure, I mean, Bach, for example, I mean, this composer,

Sounds very easy, but it's hard to play. Yeah, it sounds very easy, but if you want to really highlighting the intervals of voices, you do need to plan really precisely, and everything has to be there. That's a hard to balance. Where are you putting your attention when you're approaching? Because so many Bach pieces, for example, are written as student studies.

Yeah, yeah. And we still perform them today in concert halls because they have an elegance to them. Sometimes it's the sort of mathematical precision. Oftentimes it's the deep expressiveness to them. But oftentimes they are beginner pieces. Where are you putting your attention when you're approaching a piece that, you know, as you said, looks simple, but it actually requires a lot of precision? I mean, it's really the balancing. I mean, with Bach, it's always multiple voices.

You cannot just think about one melody. You have to be, you know, kind of simultaneously using different part of the brain in the same time. Right. You know, and don't miss somewhere and some voices. Everything has to be balanced. You have to be more like an octopus, you know, like a squid. Yeah. Yeah, you have to have more fingers and more brains.

I think one of the things I always enjoy about listening to Bach is when we're listening to Counterpoint, we have to be paying attention to the past, the present, and the future all at the same time. It kind of forces us to have this sort of wider awareness. So that's why they say that if you practice Bach maybe it makes your brain functions better, react better. Hi, everybody. It's Megan Rapino. I've been thinking a lot about this one question I've been asked over and over. A question about the choices I've made, the colors of my hair, the things in the world I've spoken about, and the things that I haven't. I've heard this question asked so many different ways, but it always came down to, why are you like this?

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podcast. Back to Beethoven. You're preparing all five concertos to play in a row. How do you prepare yourself mentally to approach such a large arc of work? I mean, since I started quite early, it's okay. But still, I like to listen

to great recordings like Daniel Barron, Boym, the people I really admire for me. He's Beethoven is the best, his interpretation. and I've been very lucky to study with him for a few years with the Beethoven repertoire. What kind of things have you learned from him?

I mean, the logical way of making music and with everything, it has to, you know, have a reason. With Beethoven's music, you cannot always just play with your emotions. You have to be very clearly on the way. what structures and what type of characters and what type of literature even

I mean he has a lot of literature connection to Gotha or to Shakespeare and this is always Shiller there's always someone that it's like a literature

it's really like a European romantic I'm a classic romantic literature style. Yeah, you're working in a much larger ecosystem of culture. It's not just the piano. Yeah, and also nature.

I mean, he's, his music, when you listen, it's a field, it's forest, is the Alps. It's so much, I mean, the birds, it's so much into the black forest or the Vietnamese hills or a little river.

whether it's rind or don't know. You really see visuals of the European forest suburbs. You really feel it. And even the folk music when they eat sausage, you know, drinking beer. It's so much alive. So there's a whole world building going on as we're hearing. Could you give an example in Beethoven of when you're hearing a character? And maybe also an example of a really clear sense of place?

I mean, this is very obvious. Like, you hear this majestic character. I mean, that's, he means Napoleon, but he was not satisfied with Napoleon later. And what about place? This is like a beautiful black forest with the water, with the waterfall. Yeah, it's always using it also. Or this is in the field.

Or a bird. Huh. Or some folk dance? Yeah, so this. So we went from like a trickling waterfall. Yeah. Dark and stormy night. Yeah.

We went into a field. but it wasn't like the sunniest day. It was kind of like a cloudy day and the birds are moving through. I mean, there are some, yeah, yeah, I mean. I'm picturing things. He's, like, normally he likes to have something with dark clouds.

Like, yeah. Yeah, let me see. The more sunny days, let's see. Yeah, that's the more on the happier. side. But he always have this kind of hint, you know, really, it's never really happy, you know, he's like, he was a stormy guy. This kind of thing, you know. I so appreciate that even in these demonstrations, you pour your whole being into every time you touch the piano, it seems. There's no treating it casually. Yeah. And if you're going through and playing a work of Beethoven that has all

of these dark, stormy clouds. Luckily, we just perform for a huge audience. That must feel good. But does it ever leave you feeling a little stormier when you get off stage? Yeah, I mean, the good thing about Beethoven, he always somehow get out from this painfulness struggle. So he's always shooting for victory in the end. It's like light at the end of the tunnel.

Yeah, he's always. So that's why many people, when they miss direction in their life or they get depressed, You listen to Beethoven's music, you always find the answer. Same thing with Brahms. But what classical music in general is to give you certain wonderful spiritual energy to bring you out from the sentimental mood, but also makes you sentimental. I think that's one of the reason why classical music has a wonderful, influence on people today.

Maybe not for everybody, but still, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a richest, quite a far corner in different part of the world. So you mastered your instrument at a young age, many of these things, I'm sure are just, you know, they're just in you at this point, but you are performing at a, at the highest level. As you said before we started, you're always on tour. You're always playing. What do you need to do to do to maintain peak performance? I think the good thing is that when you're always performing,

it's a great thing to maintain a very good level. If I stop for a while, then it's harder to get to the level I'm trying to achieve. And also, you know, by meeting different artists all the time, it's a wonderful kind of inspiration that you can learn from the others and to get yourself into a different style of appreciation as a musician. And to learn from that, to observe, to take those elements into your own interpretations and become part of you. And this is a great thing with music is that you always learning from somebody.

You put out of work last year, piano book two. and it features some of the great piano works of all time from many of the greatest composers. Yeah. Why return to the great works? I mean, I always trying to inspire more students. Yeah. Or music students and music lovers to take piano class

and to play something. Not so difficult to achieve, but you still need to practice. You still need to hear different interpretations. different references. And also, we want to not only play the greatest hit, but we also wanted to do something new, like from today's composers.

Like for example, Tony Ann, this beautiful work he made, Acreus. It's a four-handed piece. Yeah, but also we have the two-hand version as well. Would you mind giving us a hint of the melody? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and we also have, of course, wait, ground me. Where did you just take me?

That was a Lala Land. Oh, yes, of course, right. Yeah. Oh, it's a wonderful piece. Who's the composer? His name is Horowitz. Of course, yeah, yeah. So some of it is about inspiring people in,

some works that are going to pull people in, and others are also, I think, to inspire. you have a piece on piano book two called Rush E. Yeah. Because the original at one point plays every note on the piano all at the same time.

It's very hard. So we just try as fast, you know, to play as fast as possible, but to still have the clarity. You know, so don't push too hard. Yeah, and they also have pieces like

Emiration 18 by Rahmanov. Yeah, so, yeah, so we basically covered a lot of things. I even had this Chinese fairy tale story from Monkey King.

Yeah. And last year, two years ago, they made this to a big video games. Yeah. Yeah. But they used the same tune as the original TV series. Oh. Yeah. So it was

It was really funny. So it just kind of remind me when I was a kid watching the soap. Oh, so funny. You play all over the world. Right. You're bridging cultures. In what ways is music its own language that can communicate things that maybe regular language, regular words fails to communicate?

I mean, the thing is that as a musician, we play music from different part of the world. So I will try to kind of take some of the music I have learned from the past, from that region, you know, or learn something completely new, and to try to connect to the culture. It's like using their language, but on the piano. So piano is like a kind of like the bass, you know, that you can just basically play whatever cultures work. Yeah, you can always

transcribed on this instrument So this is the great thing about piano It's just easy to have that access To play wherever you want It's like a time machine And it's like airplane You don't have to go anywhere Just stay at home

Like you are in Spain here Yeah And then Or if you are You know, you want to be Egypt You can You know you can just start to play something from their region,

from their decorative note and just listen, you know, sometimes play by year. Yeah, it's really a wonderful instrument that you can go in and out quickly. So if I'm a novice, pianist, and I'm just beginning, what mindset should I have when I'm practicing?

You have to really focus a little bit on the basic things, you know, like, you know, like a C major scale. Yeah, you have to know where's your hands positioned. Like if you want to type on the computer, you know, you have to know the basic positions, right?

And fingering, yeah. And then after that, actually, you can just go wherever you want. Why you have the basic hand position the hand shape. Do you have any recommendations for people

who are beginning piano about how to fall in love with the instrument? I would say just try to listen as much as you can and chose the piece you like. Yeah, it's important. If you don't like that piece, maybe you shouldn't do it in the beginning.

You know, you should like something and then you know, try to learn that. Yeah. Yeah. whether it's Turkish march or Chopin nocturne it's always easy to start

you know it's not so hard to play with melody or something just doesn't need so much technique skills it's just holding

the positions of the hand and what if I'm feeling really angry and I'm a young pianist. What do I want to play? I mean, you can go against the anger or you can face the anger. So you can even play something makes you kind of even more angry. Yeah, like, and then release it. Yeah, what if I need to let go of that anger? What do I need to do? You know, you can push your finger much harder on the keys, but don't destroy your finger and destroy the piano, you know, but you can, you know, a little hotter.

Yeah. Yeah. What are the places in your life that are not from the world of your repertoire that are inspiring your repertoire? Paintings. Paintings. Paintings really helps me a lot, my imagination world. And to see the different part of the world with different landscapes, whether there's

ocean or snow mountain, it's always helping a lot with beautiful nature. So I'm realizing if I'm coming. to see you in a concert, you're going to transport me around the world. You're going to play Beethoven. You're going to take me into a field. You're going to go into a storm. You're going to let me out of that storm. I mean, that's the, I think once you're at the piano, you are completely in another world. You have to believe in that. You know, if you don't believe that you are capable to bring yourself into different world zones,

then it's hard for other people to believe. Well, Lolan, thank you for transporting us. I really appreciate it. Great interviews. I really enjoy chatting with you. Thank you so much for doing this.