Anyone who has witnessed Lang Lang in performance will understand the instinctive pull towards metaphors of athletic achievement. So it’s only fitting that the Chinese piano virtuoso, a distinguished alum of the Curtis Institute of Music, will perform at the Opening Ceremony of the 2026 Olympic Winter Games.
Alongside mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli, a longtime collaborator, Lang Lang will perform at the Milano San Siro Olympic Stadium on Friday, February 6, joining a star-studded lineup that also includes Andrea Bocelli, Mariah Carey, Laura Pausini and others. The ceremony’s theme is “Armonia,” meaning harmony. In the words of its creative lead, Marco Balich: “Harmony means transforming our values into images, sounds and shared emotions. It is a journey inside the colors of Italy, but it also speaks to the whole world.”
Lang Lang has performed at an Olympics opening ceremony before: he was 26, with spiky hair and a reflective silver suit, when he commanded the spotlight at the summer games in Beijing. He is now 43, an indisputable global star. He’ll go out on a North American tour later this month, starting at Carnegie Hall in New York and winding his way to Philadelphia on April 7, when he joins Yannick Nézet-Séguin and The Philadelphia Orchestra at Marian Anderson Hall for Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4.
WRTI will celebrate Opening Day for the Winter Games with a handful of appropriate musical cues, starting shortly before 8 a.m. with Leo Arnaud’s anthemic “Bugler's Dream,” which was used as the broadcast theme for the 1964 Olympics, and later incorporated by John Williams into the fanfare he composed for the 1984 games. (We’ll hear a recording by Williams with the Boston Pops Orchestra.)
At 8:20 a.m., John T.K. Scherch will play Lang Lang’s recording of Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 3 No. 2, as heard on his new album, Piano Book 2.
Later in the morning, just after 10:30, Melinda Whiting will play Towards A New Life, which Josef Suk wrote in 1919 as a patriotic march dedicated to the young Czechoslovakian army. The piece was chosen as the winners’ march during the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. We’ll hear a version by Williams with the Boston Pops.
At 2 p.m., as the Opening Ceremony is just getting underway, we’ll hear the “Skiing Dance” movement from Knudåge Riisager’s 1956 ballet Månerenen (Moon Reindeer), as led by Bo Holten. A few hours later, at 5 p.m., listen for an enduring anthem: the main theme from Vangelis’ Chariots of Fire, in a recording by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Carl Davis.
Even after Friday’s opening festivities, you’ll hear some allusions to the games: Leonard Bernstein’s Olympic Hymn, which he wrote for the International Olympic Congress in Baden-Baden in 1981, will be played on Saturday morning. And listen during Sunday Classical for Émile Waldteufel’s 1882 piece “The Skaters Waltz.”
As you can tell, we’re getting into the Olympic spirit here at WRTI. We hope you agree that our classical broadcast is, as always, going for the gold.
