“George Li is a young pianist on the rise,” reports Tom Huizenga on Wednesday (2/21) at National Public Radio. “At age 10, he gave his first public concert and at 15, he won a silver medal at the revered Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. Li has been… performing with some of the world’s great orchestras. Li is 22 now…. ‘I think the most sensible route would have been for me to go to a conservatory somewhere,’ Li admits. ‘But … it kind of dawned upon me how close music and literature are together,’ he says. ‘So it’s helped me understand music even deeper.’ Li is enrolled in a hybrid program between Harvard University and the New England Conservatory…. Li was born near Boston. His parents came to the U.S. from China in the 1980s. He says they had few opportunities to hear classical music growing up during the Cultural Revolution. Li began playing piano at age four and thought of it only as a hobby…. One day, when he was 11, playing Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto, he … ‘was kind of transported in some other reality…. After that moment I wanted to do this for the rest of my life.’ ”
Posted February 22, 2018
