Superstar pianist Lang Lang is celebrating what would've been the 200th birthday of his hero Franz Liszt by playing a concert with the Philadelphia Orchestra that will be broadcast live in movie theaters around the world. But first, he's getting a cheesesteak.

"This is a homecoming for me," he told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday before his rehearsal with the orchestra. He first came to Philadelphia in 1997 as a 15-year-old prodigy from provincial China to attend the exclusive Curtis Institute of Music, a few blocks from where he will take the stage at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts.

Two years later, while still a student going with friends to South Street for his cheesesteak fix, he already was beginning to play sold-out concert halls.

Now 29 and a worldwide sensation, Lang Lang is joining the orchestra and its chief conductor, Charles Dutoit, for three performances of Liszt's famed Piano Concerto No. 1 along with other selections. Saturday's performance will be simulcast in movie theaters in Europe and the U.S. (except for the West Coast, where it will be on tape delay) and it will be shown in theaters again on Monday.

Liszt "was the biggest rock star during that time and he inspired so many people ... to listen to the amazing art he created on the piano. Truly my piano hero," Lang Lang said. "And to do it with Philadelphia Orchestra I think is a great privilege."

His new CD, aptly titled "Liszt, My Piano Hero," is a tribute to the 19th-century composer whose Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 was Lang Lang's first encounter with classical music as a 2-year-old watching a "Tom and Jerry" cartoon on television.