DiDi's determination to reach the heights

Jan 17 2008 Music

Di Xiao tells Christopher Morley about the start to her career as an international concert pianist.

The determination that has seen the young Chinese pianist Di Xiao bring herself to the verge of a glittering international career reveals itself in many ways.

For example, she supports herself by teaching one day a week at St Dominic's School in Wolverhampton ("I need to catch a bus, and then a train, and then another bus!") and by teaching first-year undergraduates at Birmingham Conservatoire, where she obtained the Advanced Postgraduate Diploma in 2006.

She further supplements her meagre income by tinkling the ivories at Bar Epernay, the patrons of which are probably oblivious to the fact they have classical trained, award-winning musician providing their easy-listening background sounds.

However, in some small, subtle way, it might be influencing their appreciation of live music. One of DiDi's aims as a performer is "to get young people interested in the classical world.

"At the weekend you see young people in Broad Street going into the bars. Not many of them going into classical concerts, and I think that's a shame. Once they can realise the beauty with which this classical world can provide them and lead them to another level of their life, I want to attract a wider age range of people to the audience."

She certainly doesn't lack ambition. In 2004 this petite, highly feminine young lady reached the Mount Everest base camp at 5,300 metres altitude, just as a relaxation.

Such tenacity undoubtedly stems from her parents, who have devoted their lives to the furtherance of DiDi's musical career.

"My mom is a music teacher in a secondary school in Guangzhou, Southern China," she tells me. "Throughout her life she wanted to become a pianist, but she didn't get the opportunity to achieve her dream. My father is head of security at the university there.

"They bought me my first piano when I was just two years old - not a common thing in China of the 1980s - and Dad had to sell his motorbike to raise the funds."

From such beginnings, DiDi progressed through studies in Guangzhou, Odessa in the Ukraine, and eventually at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. A full scholar-ship brought her to Birmingham Conservatoire to study under Mark Racz and Malcolm Wilson.

While there, she won many prizes - the Brant Pianoforte Competition among them - culminating in the prestigious Symphony Hall recital prize, which led to her being selected as Symphony Hall's ECHO "Rising Star" for the 2008-2009 concert season. This accolade will see her appearing in many of Europe's greatest concert-halls.

The experience will be markedly different from some of her previous outings, where she has had to perform on substandard instruments.

"Many times, especially in China, in small towns where they don't have a very good standard of piano. I think that's part of the job of a pianist. You have to adjust yourself, and it's a very good training for your ear. You need very quickly to adapt to the hall size and the piano."

Though Di Xiao is now primarily embarking upon a career as an international solo pianist, she has done much accompanying in the past.

"I spent two whole years when I was doing my master's degree in Beijing, working for the voice department. I'm very interested in the voice, I think it's a very special instrument. The only instrument that belongs to ourselves.

"The piano is more like a percussion instrument, the way the hammers hit the strings. How to make the piano sing is, I think, the most difficult job for many pianists."

And DiDi is herself a singer. "I like singing. I'm the queen of karaoke in China. I quite enjoy going with a group of friends, and we sing Chinese pop songs together."

She is looking forward to ruling over major concert-halls, too.

"It's really exciting. When I practise in my normal life, I think I'm not good enough, or I need to work harder. Sometimes I will record myself playing and listen to it again and again, to make my music more interesting and more communicative with the audience.

"But once I step on the stage I feel like the queen of that place. I think if you can't convince yourself you can't convince the audience.

"When I step on the stage I just think, 'I have many stories, and I want to share these with you, it's such wonderful music'.

"It may have been written a hundred years ago, but even now we can understand how the composers felt and it can bring us beautiful scenery we have never seen in our lives. I tell them not by my language, but by the music."

Though Di Xiao has prepared four different programmes for her tour, two full-length and two shorter lunchtime ones, she is currently planning to play in the same dress every time.

"I have only one concert dress. That's quite embarrassing, as it's quite a struggle."

During our conversation in the Founder Patrons' Room at Symphony Hall we talk about conditions in China, a country with a policy of discouraging families from having more than one child, leaving future generations with no aunts, uncles or cousins, and where we hear frightful tales of baby girls being killed or abandoned.

"It does happen, but in remote, small villages, because they need a man that can work," she explains.

"I think the whole thing is a shame, because it was quite a lonely childhood for me, with no brothers or sisters to play with. It all came about in the 1980s when there became so many old people for society to support.

"But China is much more open, contrary to the articles that say they don't have human rights. I don't think that's true. I grew up in a big city and studied for seven years in the capital, and I don't feel any restrictions. China is a huge country, developing in its own way step by step. I think we should be more patient."

Beyond her Rising Star year, Di Xiao wants "to become an ambassador and create a bridge between eastern and western cultures."

She is prepared to accept the loneliness of the long-distance concert pianist.

"Being a pianist is no doubt the loneliest career. Sometimes I envy chamber groups, they travel together, they chat with each other, they do things together.

"I would love to have a family one day. That would make me more complete as a person. But music is my choice, to become a soloist is my choice. No pain, no gain! Everything has a price. I chose this, so I have to give up something.

"I chose this as my career, because I can share that magic moment with my audience and make them smile, or shed a tear.

"I remember I played a concert in Stratford, and afterwards a gentleman came to me and said, 'Thank you. I just lost my mother a few days ago, and your concert's really warmed my heart and cheered me up'. I think that's quite priceless, so I think I'll bear with the loneliness that I chose in order to be a soloist."

And with that, Di Xiao gathers her belongings and goes off to moonlight in The Mailbox bar, playing it again and maybe raising enough to buy herself a second, much needed, concert dress . 

* To support Di Xiao as she launches her career, email Karen Daw at Symphony Hall on karen.daw@thsh.co.uk or ring 0121 644 5075.