Quotes of the Day

If you want to be an overnight sensation in classical music these days, you'd best look the part. You can be moodily romantic like long-haired Argentinian guitarist Dominic Miller (signed up by BBC Worldwide to launch their Inversion label), sulkily sexy like the all-girl string quartet Bond (2 million albums sold and counting). Skittishly sexy is also fine, a la Myleene Klass, the English Popstars siren turned classical pianist (also signed by Universal, reportedly for €1.4 million-plus). Smoldering sulkiness is equally bankable, as bad-boy Croatian pianist Maksim is finding out (EMI has signed him for five albums). Even a rap persona can work, as demonstrated by "Tony Henry," the new name of once-legit operatic tenor Anthony Garfield Henry, now reborn and rehyped as the €4.3 million contracted "P. Diddy of opera."

Judging by this crowd, you might think the entire classical-music world is becoming more and more pop: dominated by production-line performers who fit the latest high-selling stereotype. And to some extent it's true. Many record execs, understandably excited by the high sales figures of acts such as tenor Russell "The Voice" Watson and teen soprano Charlotte Church, now place their bets on musicians with broad commercial potential — the chance to earn big numbers swiftly. So they throw seven-figure contracts and vast marketing budgets at those who can best ape the pop stars.

What they forget, of course, is that serious, carefully nurtured and developed classical stars may not yield immediate pop-size receipts, but can have an international shelf life of decades. Richard Lyttleton, president of classics and jazz for EMI International, points to the example of superstar conductor Simon Rattle: "For 15 years we carried a debit balance on his recordings." During those years management consultants repeatedly told Lyttleton to drop Rattle; Lyttleton had to threaten to resign to protect the conductor. His loyalty and patience paid off; these days Rattle's albums are all but guaranteed to make the classical Top 10 charts. "If you spend a long time building promising talents," says Lyttleton, "you increase your chances that they'll pay off for a long time."

You're not saying you're the best musician in the room, just that you know how to do your job. — DANIEL HARDING

Twenty years after Rattle's emergence, there are fewer opportunities for mainstream classical artists to build big careers. But there are still ways. Competitions, famous mentors, and serious but well- promoted labels like EMI's Debut series prevent crossovers from completely crowding out serious talent. And every so often someone with that indefinable touch of brilliance comes along. Time has chosen three new sensations from the current crop: twentysomethings with the interpretive insight, technique and, yes, charisma to sell records for the next 50 years — and become truly great artists along the way.

Lang Lang, 21, China.
Lang Lang plays table football the same way he plays piano: irrepressibly. He spins his players upside down in absurdly impossible acrobatics, the ball shoots everywhere, occasionally leaving the table altogether and hitting passers-by on the head. At this year's Verbier Festival in Switzerland, where audiences and performers mingle in the local bars, I found myself facing off against the Chinese boy wonder's unique brand of uncompromising passion. For the record, he lost. Then again, only two hours before, he'd played the most exciting performance of Rachmaninoff's famously challenging Piano Concerto No. 3 I'd ever attended. So he could be forgiven for letting his football skills dip.

Lang Lang is already a veteran. He's been studying his instrument since joining the Liaoning-based Shenyang Conservatory of Music at the age of 3, made his professional debut at 13, and grabbed attention in America in 1999, when his last-minute substitution in "Gala of the Century" in Ravinia with the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 brought the audience to its feet. "It was," says Lang Lang, "the moment of my dreams." In China he's played for former President Jiang Ze-Min, been the subject of a best-selling biography, and is recognized on the streets. Now that success is spreading to the West. He's onto his second record contract, having just been snapped up by Deutsche Grammophon, which recently released his recordings of Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn concertos. In July he was given the honor of opening the BBC Proms in London with a nationally televised concert. A few days later, he played on Good Morning America, and as a result, his Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn album made No. 1 on Amazon.com's "Movers and Shakers" list for the biggest leap in sales.

Hearing Lang Lang on disc is gratifying, but you have to see him — even in the most fiendishly difficult passages he hardly even looks at the keyboard, his eyes searching out orchestra members to visibly join in the joy or pain of making music, or looking roof-wards as he rides the passion. "I always study the score carefully," says Lang Lang. "When I start to play, my mind remembers the theory, but my heart starts a journey. I straddle both the composer's world and my own. When I can successfully merge the two, that's when the magic happens."

His goal: to use his fame to build a cultural bridge between East and West, playing Chinese music to Western audiences and vice versa. "The West is hungry now for Chinese culture — like the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with its music by Tan Dun," he says. "And in China, young people are devouring Shakespeare. Music moves people so deeply, it can really make them feel differently about each other."

Official Website: www.langlang.com

Daniel Harding, 28, England.
Of all the musical professions, conductors tend to reach their peak in later years, after acquiring the life experience and authority to mine the deepest riches of an orchestra. None of which bothers Harding. "It is an older man's game," he concedes. "But the great conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler made his debut at 19, so there are exceptions!"

Harding is making his own rules. As a young teenager in Oxford he would conduct groups of friends on weekends. Artistically ambitious, he decided to try a rare piece by Schönberg, but found it so difficult he sought help from his music

Crossing Over With images as shiny as their instruments, these chart-happy classical musicians are acting like pop stars and blurring the line between Brahms and Britney Myleene Klass yui mock/pa Pert pinup who found fame through the U.K. reality TV-show Popstars, saw her group break up and now hopes to make it as a pseudo-classical pianist. Universal signed her to a six-album deal reportedly worth over €1.4 million. Cheerfully admits she couldn't sit through a long opera. Her CD's not out yet, but if she's a great pianist, wouldn't we have heard about it before now? She can count on a teen following in Britain, but elsewhere she'll have to get by on talent. As a manufactured pop star she didn't last long, so it's unlikely she'll fare better with the classics. Commercial potential: $$ Artistry: Too soon to tell Dominic Miller Argentinian session guitarist and a favorite collaborator of Sting, he hit the classical charts earlier this year with Shapes — pop reworkings of classics by Beethoven, Bach, Elgar and Albinoni. When his album launched BBC Worldwide's Inversion label, rivals feared the label's built-in media access would mean unfair playtime. Sales might have more to do with model looks than the inoffensive muzak. Commercial potential: $$$$ Artistry: ... Tony Henry myung jung kim/pa Former journeyman singer Anthony Garfield Henry now has a better name, Gucci shades and big rings, and is being hailed as opera's P. Diddy (although what this means is anyone's guess — will he date Jennifer Lopez and fire weapons in crowded opera halls?). Warner Music is trumpeting his 34.3 million, five-album contract — one of which will be an opera-style CD of pop songs. Opera meets rap — well, at least he's got the niche to himself. Commercial potential: $$$$ Artistry: Too soon to tell

teacher — who mentioned it to Simon Rattle. Rattle was curious to meet the boy who wanted to conduct Schönberg, and invited him to a rehearsal with his City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. He even let him conduct a bit.

Impressed by Harding's knowledge and his confidence, Rattle took Harding on as an assistant and began recommending the young man everywhere. Before long, Harding was plucked from university at 18 by Claudio Abbado, then chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, who wanted Harding to assist him. He made his full debut with the Berliners at 21. Now living in France, Harding is about to lead his second band, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. The key to avoiding crippling nerves, he says, is never to allow them through the door: "You just have to think that you're not saying you're the best musician in the room, just that you know how to do your job. You're not telling these musicians who've been around for years how to do theirs." Matthew Gibson, double-bass player and board member of the London Symphony Orchestra, says of Harding: "We all think he'll be one of the greats in 10 or 15 years."

Harding's recordings (he's signed exclusively to Virgin Classics) have been mixed so far, but last year's issue of Britten's opera The Turn of the Screw revealed a new depth pushing through his characteristic incisiveness. But Harding is the first to concede that he has some ripening to do: "I feel I'm a grown-up artist now, with my own orchestra and recordings, but I also know that in 10 years I'll look back and say, 'A grown-up? Then? Preposterous!'"

Jonathan Lemalu, 27, New Zealand.
This burly bass-baritone may have accomplished less so far than Lang Lang or Harding, but he's generating just as much buzz. And no wonder. At his Glyndebourne Festival debut this summer, playing Neptune in Mozart's Idomeneo, he riveted the attention with not only vocal power, but musicality in a flashy part that's too often just belted out.

Lemalu is on the cusp of stardom. His first album last year, a rich collection of favorite songs like Schubert's Der Wanderer and Finzi's Rollicum-Rorum, won him the Gramophone magazine award for best newcomer. Although EMI are cagey about the figures, it sold tens of thousands — extremely good for an unknown singer — persuading the label to sign him to a five-year contract. His triumph in New Zealand music competitions led famous judges Sarah Walker and Tom Krause to recommend him to London's Royal College of Music, where he won the college's gold medal.

It's not only Lemalu's vast, rolling bass-baritone that has marked him out. "He's got an incredible stage presence and real artistry," says Glyndebourne's executive chairman Gus Christie. The singer himself attributes his confidence to his Western Samoan roots. "My people are not performers, but they are very flamboyant," he says. "They have self-belief in things which might perhaps deter others."

The famous haka war ritual performed by New Zealand's All Blacks rugby team, a posturing display of aggression, is the ultimate Kiwi demonstration of confidence, and Lemalu, soft-spoken with a frequent laugh, comes from a background more rugby than Rigoletto. "The fact that I sang in the choir sat uneasily with my rugby playing as far as the other boys were concerned. But I really enjoyed it." With a Schubert disc due out next year and debuts at London's Royal Opera and with the Berlin Philharmonic coming up soon, Lemalu might have to let sports take a back seat for a while.

Is classical music in crisis? With young talents like these bursting through, it's hard to be too pessimistic. The industry will never achieve pop's massive sales, but it continues to produce great artists with long shelf lives and tidy profit potential. And they don't have to wear wet T shirts or simulate sex with their instruments to do it.

Official Website: www.jonathanlemalu.com

• JAMES INVERNE
• Three serious classical stars with real charisma