In the 21 years he has been coming to play with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra Chinese piano megastar Lang Lang often seems to appear like a returning comet around his birthday.

In 2016 his performance of Grieg’s Piano Concerto was marked with the on-stage presentation of a birthday cake in the shape of a piano, and this latest tour kicked off with a one-off performance of Camille Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concerto No. 2, under the baton of the SSO’s Conductor in Residence Benjamin Northey, four days after the pianist turned 43.

Lang Lang and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Photo © Jay Patel

His five tours here have given his legion of fans the chance to gauge the development of one of the music world’s genre-defying giants. First there was the ebullient but modest 22-year-old of 2004 who so impressed with his explosive handling of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and a recital of works by Schumann, Chopin, Haydn and Tan Dun.

He returned in 2011 to perform a show-stopping Rach 2, by now a household name and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, having played in the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics and collaborated with...