聚焦
Music is Part of my Life, It is Indispensable, It can bring us Joy, and Touch our Souls
鄭慧
2013年12月17日
Founder, Cheng Wai Piano Institute
“…music is a part of my life, it is indispensable, it can bring us joy, and touch our souls.” These are the words of Vivian Cheng posted onto the front page of the music school she founded. Now a well-known performer and a teacher of piano, Cheng can relate her achievement as the sum of the three stages of her artistic development in ：Beijing, Hong Kong and the United States.
For Cheng, success came rather early. A native of Beijing, Cheng came to Hong Kong with her parents when she was a teenager. Talented and with an excellent memory for music scores, Cheng was admitted to the Academy where she was a star student and a regular winner of scholarships. She still remembers with delight how fascinated she was with the brand-new campus featuring a glass elevator ! Under the great care of her teachers, Cheng spent four years at the Academy where she had given many public performances, was invited to radio and television performances; and when she graduated, she gave a recital at the City Hall Concert Hall. Therefore, it was with extreme confidence that she took up her bachelor studies on a full scholarship at the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music, little did she realize that it was going to be one of the most trying experience of her life.
The greatest challenge : Cheng was asked to interpret the music, rather than playing it her way she used to. For over a year, Cheng kept trying to solve the ‘conundrum’ with help from friends, listening to different interpretations and spending many hours practicing, at the same time trying to understand the classes conducted in English and nursing her home-sickness in the cold winters of Philadelphia. As a young person entirely on her own, the first years in the US were among the toughest in her life.
“It was only at the end of the second year that I began to enjoy my time there,” said Cheng, when she found herself getting used to the style of learning and most important, that was when she started to see the poetry in the music. By the time she completed her degree studies at Curtis, she felt a great urge to learn more. After Curtis, Cheng took her master’s at Yale University, then went on to teach for three years at Northfield Mount Hermon, a boarding school in Massachusettes where she received an award for teaching excellence.
Despite her sense of achievement at the school, Cheng was thirsting for more – she went on to complete her DMA at New York State University where her dissertation was on the Chinese legend The Butterfly Lovers. With ingenuity, she managed to invite the son of one of the composers Mr He Zhanhao to be her violin soloist for her lecture recital.
Now a mother of two sons, 12 and 10, Cheng divides her time between performing, teaching and bringing up a family. On looking back, she attributes her success to passion and perseverance, her greatest reward being her enjoyment of the music she plays on her own or with friends, when she feels like she is admiring pictures of beautiful scenery unfolding before her very eyes.
2013年12月17日
Founder, Cheng Wai Piano Institute
“…music is a part of my life, it is indispensable, it can bring us joy, and touch our souls.” These are the words of Vivian Cheng posted onto the front page of the music school she founded. Now a well-known performer and a teacher of piano, Cheng can relate her achievement as the sum of the three stages of her artistic development in ：Beijing, Hong Kong and the United States.
For Cheng, success came rather early. A native of Beijing, Cheng came to Hong Kong with her parents when she was a teenager. Talented and with an excellent memory for music scores, Cheng was admitted to the Academy where she was a star student and a regular winner of scholarships. She still remembers with delight how fascinated she was with the brand-new campus featuring a glass elevator ! Under the great care of her teachers, Cheng spent four years at the Academy where she had given many public performances, was invited to radio and television performances; and when she graduated, she gave a recital at the City Hall Concert Hall. Therefore, it was with extreme confidence that she took up her bachelor studies on a full scholarship at the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music, little did she realize that it was going to be one of the most trying experience of her life.
The greatest challenge : Cheng was asked to interpret the music, rather than playing it her way she used to. For over a year, Cheng kept trying to solve the ‘conundrum’ with help from friends, listening to different interpretations and spending many hours practicing, at the same time trying to understand the classes conducted in English and nursing her home-sickness in the cold winters of Philadelphia. As a young person entirely on her own, the first years in the US were among the toughest in her life.
“It was only at the end of the second year that I began to enjoy my time there,” said Cheng, when she found herself getting used to the style of learning and most important, that was when she started to see the poetry in the music. By the time she completed her degree studies at Curtis, she felt a great urge to learn more. After Curtis, Cheng took her master’s at Yale University, then went on to teach for three years at Northfield Mount Hermon, a boarding school in Massachusettes where she received an award for teaching excellence.
Despite her sense of achievement at the school, Cheng was thirsting for more – she went on to complete her DMA at New York State University where her dissertation was on the Chinese legend The Butterfly Lovers. With ingenuity, she managed to invite the son of one of the composers Mr He Zhanhao to be her violin soloist for her lecture recital.
Now a mother of two sons, 12 and 10, Cheng divides her time between performing, teaching and bringing up a family. On looking back, she attributes her success to passion and perseverance, her greatest reward being her enjoyment of the music she plays on her own or with friends, when she feels like she is admiring pictures of beautiful scenery unfolding before her very eyes.
