Zhao was performing Chopin in concerts at age 8

Melodie Zhao, age 15 (photo: Vera Makus)

Updated 7 March: link to review in Le Temps Geneva / Saint Prex, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Mélodie Zhao, age 15, will sit down at a grand piano at Geneva’s Victoria Hall Tuesday evening, to a sellout crowd of nearly 2,000 people, to interpret Chopin, in honour of his 200th birthday. It’s one of several Chopin events this week in Geneva which include 24 pianists from around the world, each interpreting one of his Etudes, also at Victoria Hall.

Zhao will perform the complete 27 Etudes (Op. 10 and Op. 25 and three without opus numbers) in one concert, a challenge rarely met by pianists.

“Ernesto”, president of Zamis OSR (Friends of the Suisse Romande Orchestra), which organized Zhao’s concert, calls her “phenomenal” and British classical pianist Andràs Schiff says she is “fantastic.” Ernesto noted in a recent letter to members of the group, inviting them to Tuesday’s concert, that “I will hardly insist on the extraordinary feat that performing all 27 of Chopin’s Etudes in one concert represents: it’s enough to say very few pianists are even up to this.”

Zhao’s relationship to Chopin is very special: at age 13 she became the youngest person to record his complete 24 Etudes with opus numbers, in the Tibor Varga Studios in Switzerland. At age eight she was already performing Chopin’s work in concert halls.

Her relationship to Geneva is also special, with her first completely solo recital at age 10 performed at the Palais de l’Athénée in Geneva, a programme of 70 minutes, with works from several periods.

She has been invited, since age 12, to perform at major festivals and concert series including, in Switzerland, the Davos Festival, Musiksommer am Zurichsee, and les Sommets du Classique in Crans-Montana.

Tuesday’s concert is a return trip to Geneva’s Victoria Hall, where she and Chopin have already enchanted audiences, notably in June 2009 when she played as a soloist with the Geneva Symphony Orchestra (Ed. note: YouTube videos are at the end of this article).

Melodie Zhao and sister Cadenza, at home (photo ©2010: Ellen Wallace)

Saint Prex pianist was Geneva’s youngest recipient of bachelor’s degree

Mélodie, who lives in Saint Prex and attended local schools while also studying from age nine at the Conservatoire in Geneva, is now the youngest student in the master’s degree programme at the conservatory. In 2009 she became the youngest person, at 14, to be awarded a bachelor’s degree by the canton of Geneva.

At the ripe old age of 15, with a demanding schedule of four to eight hours of music a day, six days a week, and a musical maturity uncommon for her age, she’s moved on to other composers.

Beethoven and Bach, for example. “And now it’s Liszt and Ravel – but I think all musicians like some of this music,” she laughs. Her love of Chopin remains. “Everything is there, everything you need to learn,” she enthuses, showing how the composer’s Etudes teach a pianist to stretch, to reach, to modulate – in short, to master the instrument.

Music is clearly far more than technical skill, for a professional concert pianist, which is Mélodie’s goal – although her technique and musicality are clearly excellent.

“She reads everything she can get her hands on about a composer’s life, his times, the world he lived in – she really wants to understand everything about him and his music,” says her mother, Yin.

It’s easy to forget, talking to Mélodie, who was born in Gruyère in September 1994 that she is not yet 16. She has a grace and composure that come only later to most people, the result of giving concerts around the world for several years. She has regularly performed in Switzerland, sometimes as part of the concerts offered by the Migros Culture Percentage, where she has been a soloist since 2009.

Grandfather taught her perfect pitch, father remains her coach

Her grandfather taught her perfect pitch when she was a two-and-a-half-year-old in China, while her grandmother gave the little girl her first keyboard lessons.

Her grandfather was responsible for orchestrating the musicians during marching parades in Beijing, a daunting task of ensuring that a thousand musicians knew their work and performed it well.

Shortly before she turned three Mélodie began piano lessons with Jiaquan Chen, professor at the Central Conservatory of Music of China in Beijing.

Her father Zhao Yuan, a renowned violinist and teacher in his own right at the Central Conservatory, has acted as her daily coach, an important guide in addition to her piano professor.

She is telling us this over dinner, for the Zhao’s are neighbours, and the sound of Chopin from their windows is part of the thread of daily life in the old town of the lakeside village of St Prex. The music is muted by a blocked fireplace and quilts over the piano.

A small collection of photos on the dining room wall shows her father’s mother, a dancer, in military garb in the early 1950s. Her father, a young man in 1977, is pictured with other young musicians. Mélodie’s mother Yin, who is Chinese Malaysian, smiles at us from the wall, not much older than Mélodie now. She and Yuan met in Geneva. The girls and their mother are all Swiss.

Mélodie and her sister giggle and wrinkle their noses as they look into the digital camera lens at photos I’ve taken of them. They approve of others. Melodie is used to critiquing her appearance and is far less self-conscious about it than most teenagers. “I watch videos of my performances so I can learn how the audience sees me. I’m there for them, after all.”

Mélodie Zhao (photo: Vera Makus)

But can perfect pitch really be taught, the guests wonder, coming back to her grandfather’s lessons? “Some are more sensitive to it than others,” her father explains. “Some people can be trained, but you really need to have a gift for it. But if you have no professional training you’ll get nowhere. A seed needs sunshine.” If someone taps a glass Mélodie will know if the sound is F sharp.

“It’s very rare, though, to have ears like this,” he says, recalling his years of teaching music, often to excellent students, sometimes to others who are less so.

He taught music to village children during the Cultural Revolution, in the early 1970s. “I had 20 kids and asked them to sing a song – not one of them could stay on key! Oh, that was hard for a musician!” he laughs. “I picked the seven best and after a period of several months they could perform violin in an ensemble.” Four went on to become professional musicians in symphony orchestras, he chuckles.

Mélodie prefers, like most teenagers, to talk about the present.

Knives and skiing accidents are too high-risk

“Before, I worked with Mayumi Balet-Kameda, and now I’m studying with Pascal Devoyon, He’s really good,” she says enthusiastically of her latest teacher.

Her father is cooking dinner, a feast of dishes that he describes as home cooking, for the guests. He carries out a steaming beef dish from the kitchen. “I’m very moved by how hard she’s always worked,” he says, setting down the dish and it’s not clear if the hint of tears is emotion or the onions he’s been chopping.

Father and daughter have a special musical comraderie .”They sit around the kitchen table for hours and discuss things that I don’t understand at all!” laughs Yin, who is not a musician. Her own background is in the hotel industry and events management, training which earlier helped her organize some of Mélodie’s performances. She will soon be leaving for the Shanghai World Exposition for several months, where she will be managing the Swiss Cities Pavilion. Yuan and the girls will spend time in China with her and with the grandparents during the school holidays.

Sister and mother have other interests

The entire family supports Mélodie’s studies and performances, but younger sister Cadenza shakes her head firmly when asked if she ever wanted to be a musician. Melodie ribs her about how she doesn’t like to work. Cadenza rolls her eyes and makes it clear she’d rather spend time being a typical 12-year-old. She and Mélodie both say they’re looking forward to visiting China again and their family there.

The girls are like so many international families’ children in Switzerland: the family speaks Chinese together, but the girls sometimes slip into French, their school and friends’ language, with each other.

Dinner is excellent and the girls admit they like to watch their father cook.

“Oh no,” says Mélodie quickly, when asked if he’s teaching her to cook. “He uses very sharp knives, you know,” adding that she can’t take the risk of cutting her hands.

It’s February and time for the Swiss school holidays, when everyone goes skiing. Cadenza likes to ski, she tells us. Mélodie shakes her head. “It would be too easy to fall, and if I had a sprain, or broke anything – ” she trails off. Clearly, when your hands are a critical tool for what you do, you don’t take risks with them. It would be wrong to assume she is missing out on fun, however, for it’s clear that she gets back from music as much as she gives to it.

She’s the one who pushes herself, but she’s kept a sense of humour

Mélodie Zhao signs autographs after concert in China, 2009

Mélodie is used to questions about whether or not her parents have pushed her, but asking the question is really a journalist’s afterthought because five minutes with the young woman makes it clear that Mélodie is in charge of her own life, with parental guidance. Music is her passion, and she is very focused.

The phone rings several times, confirmations needed about concert dates or details. Mélodie takes the phone from her mother. “She’s the one who discusses her programme with people organizing concerts. She knows what she’s doing, what she wants,” says Yin in English, turning to Cadenza to insist that she use her English. A mix of French, English and Chinese has been bubbling at the table, not surprising given that Yin also works as a Chinese-French-English translator.

Mélodie’s friends don’t have the same musical taste she has, and she isn’t wild about the music they listen to. She makes a face when asked about it. A 15-year-old briefly flashes to the surface. She has a couple school friends from her Saint Prex days and she continues to see them on weekends, when she’s not trekking into the city for classes. “We’re still good friends,” she says, clearly treasuring this, for most of her classmates in Geneva are in their 20′s, some even older. She keeps mostly to herself at the university, she says, “but we don’t really have time there for much more than music. We’re either running around looking for a room because the practice rooms are spread around Geneva, or we’re working.”

Next: her own composition, ready for April

The seventh day of the week, when she’s not playing piano, is reserved for her correspondence coursework for a French baccalauréat secondary school diploma through the French Centre National d’Enseignement à Distance, which she is doing simultaneously with her master’s in music programme.

And she’s busy working on a composition, her first.

A recital she gave in 2009 in Jinan, Shandong province, China so impressed the city’s cultural director that he proposed she compose a piano solo work on the theme of “Springs”. It will be presented in April in Jinan, which calls itself the City of Springs, at the first annual Shandong Music Festival, where Mélodie has been invited to give a concert.

She’s enthusiastic about the project and doesn’t appear to feel much pressure, although she admits it is a lot of work. Has it taught her to appreciate composers more, working on their side of the fence? She laughs. “Oh yes, you learn so much more about music by writing it!”

In the meantime, listening to her play is an extraordinary experience.

Ed. note: The Zamis OSR are sponsoring Zhao’s concert, with support from the city of Geneva, the Wilsdorf Foundation and the Loterie Romande.

Links to other sites:

• Mélodie Zhao’s music is available online at melodiezhao.ch
• Xinhua TV
• NVP 3D TV interview with Mélodie

Mélodie Zhan playing Chopin Concerto N° 2 for piano and orchestra at Victoria Hall Geneva. Director: Hervé Klopfenstein, Geneva Symphony Orchestra, general rehearsal, 9 June 2009
First movement

Second movement

Third movement

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