He is a Chinese superstar, a piano virtuoso who has sold millions of albums worldwide and regularly topped the classical charts. Lang Lang has also used his fame and fortune to help state schools that lack music, sounding warnings at a 2019 awards ceremony in London that such lessons had become “a real challenge” for children in the most disadvantaged communities. Now he is bringing music to British state schools in an ambitious project that will set up state-of-the-art “piano labs” across the nation. Each lab will have 20 to 30 keyboards. The scheme is inspired by his programmes in the US and China, in which he has invested tens of millions of pounds.