Violinist hits perfect note with Carnegie ovation

"I used my violin to imitate Peking Opera singing, which is very challenging. I wanted to do something both to continue our culture, and in the meanwhile add some creativity. When I played the Peking Opera song at Carnegie Hall, the audience got a glimpse of the ancient art form through the interpretation of violin," Lao says.

It's not the first time that the violinist used her instrument to imitate sounds of different traditional Chinese music and instrument. In 2017, she premiered the violin version of Chinese Sights and Sounds, a suite consisting of 24 orchestral compositions by Bao Yuankai in 1991, by using violin to imitate sounds of traditional Chinese musical instruments, such as the erhu (Chinese fiddle), xiao (a vertical bamboo flute) and suona (a double-reed woodwind instrument).

During her recent concert at the Carnegie Hall, Lao also played Cai Diao, a selection from Bao's Chinese Sights and Sounds, which is adapted from a folk song of Yunnan province.

She has just finished recording an album with the leading classical music label Naxos, featuring most of the pieces she performed during the concert at Carnegie Hall.

Raised in Wuhan, Hubei province, and Beijing, Lao was introduced to the violin by her mother, who is a pediatrician and an early age music educator.

"My mother loves music and she still took violin lessons when she was pregnant. So the sound of the instrument has been with me even before I was born, I guess," says Lao.

After she was enrolled to study at the primary school affiliated to the Central Conservatory of Music, Lao studied with legendary violin professor Lin Yaoji (1937-2009) as his youngest student at that time.

At 18, Lao won a full scholarship to study at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. Later, she moved to Boston in the United States to study at the New England Conservatory of Music, where she gained her Bachelor's and Master's degrees. With a full scholarship, Lao continued her academic studies at the Reina Sofia School of Music in Madrid, Spain, with the legendary violinist and professor Zakhar Bron. Inspired by Bron's teaching approach, Lao has translated Bron's The Art of the Etude, a summation of his years of teaching, into Chinese along with a violin study book.

In 2017, when the Czech National Symphony Orchestra played during the Shanghai International Arts Festival, Lao stepped in at the last moment and earned enthusiastic reviews for her performance of Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op 64.

"I can still recall that I had to practice on the flight because rehearsals started right after I landed in Shanghai and the concert opened on the same night," says Lao.

Violinist Donald Weilerstein once praised Lao's performance as "delicately touching, full of imagination and the warmth of sunlight".

In 2018, Lao returned to China and has been teaching at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing since then.

Contact the writer at chennan@chinadaily.com.cn