When the New York Times described Chinese pianist Lang Lang as 'the hottest artist on the classical music planet' it was assumed that a once-great newspaper has given up on the English language.

However, there can be no 'hype' without substance. The 28-year-old's first visit to Cardiff demonstrated enough of that to make us sit up but not faint with euphoria.

The trouble with overblown reputations is that they are either based on, or encourage, eccentricities. Lang Lang's is a tendency to bury himself in the music and not so much lose his way as create a direction of his own.

This happened in book one of Iberia by Albeniz, where the composer's intentionally hazy atmosphere almost evaporated.

But elsewhere there was much evidence of a magnetic personality at work, especially in passages which enabled the pianist to show off his almost throwaway dexterity, such as the outer movements of Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata and the complex opening movement of the same composer's Sonata No 3 in C.

One of Lang Lang’s supreme qualities is his touch, which can sustain a whisper-level volume beyond points where other pianists risk not depressing the key at all. Another is a confidence in virtuoso episodes, such as the hammered finale of Prokofiev’s Sonata No 7 in B flat, that in others might appear reckless.

There were enough of such moments to please a capacity audience of Lang Lang’s adoring followers, who were only disappointed that a political protester tried to hi-jack the ovation at the end.