Princess Charlotte’s new hobby must be music to Kate Middleton’s ears: The 8-year-old princess has reportedly started learning to play the piano, just like her mother.

Kate and husband Prince William attended the Royal Variety Performance at Prince Albert Hall in London Thursday evening, where Chinese pianist Lang Lang played alongside a 13-year-old girl named Lucy, who is blind and autistic. Lang Lang told Hello! that he spoke with the princess after the performance.

“We talked about Charlotte. Her Royal Highness talked about Charlotte's piano playing, I'm sure she's good,” he said. “Her Royal Highness said to me that she said to Princess Charlotte ‘Hey, look, if you practice a lot you can be like him.’”

“So I’m happy to be helpful a little bit,” he said of setting a positive example. “It’s really funny, I was like, wow, I’m sure she will do well at the piano. I think she is practicing.”

As a child, Middleton reportedly reached Grade 3 in piano by the standards of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, of a possible eight grades, but appears to have kept up her skills. In 2021, at the first Together at Christmas carol concert, she gave her first public piano performance as a royal, accompanying Tom Walker as he sang “For Those Who Can’t Be Here.”

Walker, after the event, praised his royal accompanist.

“Without doubt, it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” he said. “I thought she absolutely smashed the performance; it's not easy to just jump behind a piano with a bunch of musicians you've never played with before and record live takes to camera, but she completely nailed it.”

Kate also studied flute and voice as a child. In 2012, her former piano teacher, Daniel Nicholls, told The Standard that she was a model music student.

"She was absolutely lovely, a really delightful person to teach the piano," he said. “I don't think anyone would say she was going to be a concert pianist, but she was good at it, she always did everything she was told.”