Taking The Measure of a Prodigy

“Whatever Platonic fascinations they might hold, supremely gifted young musicians also live in a bruising real world of managers, agents, recording contracts, talented and carefully cultivated rivals, standard-bearing critics and a listening public fine-tuned by CDs, pirated downloads and the world-wide whir of Internet music sites and chat rooms.” In other words, do not envy the prodigy: all the talent in the world can’t spare him from the inevitable backlash of a world obsessed with the rapid rise and fall of celebrities. Case in point: the omnipresent Lang Lang…