China's best young pianists will receive expert instruction from
the world's best musicians at a new academy to open Beijing next
year.
Master pianists Fou Ts'ong, Menahem Pressler, Dmitri Bashkirov,
Claude Frank and John Perry will share their knowledge to the
budding Chinese artists.
According to William Grant Nabore, co-founder and director of
the International Piano Academy Lake Como, the new Beijing branch
of the academy will be a center of excellence.
He said three or four of the seven students selected from other
parts of the Asia-Pacific region will be Chinese.
"We chose to open a branch in Beijing because China is the most
important nation in the Asia-Pacific region, and is also becoming
one of the centers of classic music in the world," Nabore says.
In 2002, Nabore and Argentine pianist Martha Argerich founded
the academy, which is located in Dongo, Italy. Every year, the
academy selects young pianists from more than 400 applicants across
the world, to study at the academy for one to two years.
Tuition and accommodation are free. The teachers come to the
academy in turn, each staying for one week, to give lessons to the
students. Chinese pianists Sun Meiting and Xie Ya'ou have studied
at the academy.
"When I first came to China seven years ago I noticed that the
most gifted Chinese pianists were obliged to go abroad if they
desired to obtain an international level of performance," Nabore
says.
The International Piano Academy Lake Como's branch in Beijing,
collaborated with the Central Conservatory of Music, is the only
branch of the academy so far. The classes will begin in September
2008. The same teachers who teach in Italy will come to Beijing to
teach the seven students selected by the academy.
To launch the project, the International Piano Academy Lake
Como, Central Conservatory of Music and China National Symphony
Orchestra will jointly hold a Beijing Lake Como International Piano
Festival in July next year.
The piano is one of the most popular musical instruments in
China. In recent years, two young Chinese pianists - Lang Lang and
Li Yundi - have become popular throughout the world and are
idolized in China for their musical achievements.
"I have a vision that if the respect and love for music is
propagated throughout China where so many new concert halls are
being built, then maybe there will come the day when if you want to
study and hear the best classical music, you have to go to Beijing,
to Shanghai, to China," Nabore says.
Xie Ya'ou is a Chinese pianist who has
studied at the International Piano Academy Lake Como.?
(China Daily August 7, 2007)
