Comments

Evan Le, pianist — 12 Comments

1. IMO, it strains credulity to imagine that genetics alone is sufficient explanation for this degree of mastery at this young an age.

   We may be witness not simply to a prodigy but to evidence of a reincarnated virtuoso. Reportedly, Mozart exhibited this degree of mastery at a similiar age…

   My understanding is that the early Christian church accepted reincarnation until the hierarchy decided that theory to be… ‘counter-productive’.

2. Not only is he amazing, but he also seems to be loving it. He didn’t need a Tiger Mom.

3. Cousins went to Julliard, i turned it down.. quit playing after Lincoln center and Carnegie hall… cousin played Lincoln too… Arts, Science & Military family.. maybe there will be a interesting wiki someday..

   I find it hard to comment given my childhood…

4. Geoffrey, ever think the bell curve isnt lop sided and for all the idiots and violent types and so on you easily notice, how many good mutants are there?

   oh, and you always think that kid is normal, cause its a package, right? but what if he is less social? ok if your singing brown eyed girl and used to be a window washer, but not everyone can exist in ideal soil…

   want to know whats worse?
   Being one who grew up…

5. Art,

   I’d pat you on the back in commiseration, but there’s no room for my hand.

   Well, not really. You’ve insulted other’s intelligence here so often that I’m fresh out of sympathy for your whinning.

6. A Mozart lover. It is amazing to run into such children in person, they impress not only technically, but expressively. Piano and organ prodigies seem to be much more common than violin prodigies, I suspect strings require more technical mastery than most children can manage.

7. What can I say, I absolutely hate him! *applause*

   –Seriously, yes, pretty awesome. And I hear him playing “loud and soft and fast and slow.” (Praise swiped from either Taylor, Downes, or H. Schoenberg — IIRC, never a safe bet.)

   Thanks for posting, Neo.

   .

   Chuck — You make me wonder if he may have Suzuki training.

8. Chuck – I am glad to see these prodigies in action because they make the older tales believable – even though Mozart et al. have contemporary witnesses’ testimonials, I always wondered if those weren’t sometimes a little informed by hindsight.

   They also make me think rather irreverently of Tom Lehrer’s line about his own modest musical talents: “Why, when Mozart was my age, he had been dead three years.”

9. Just like little Mozart and his sister Nannerl! It’s marvelous to see such talent!

10. Le probably didn’t get his start the same way Lang did.

    http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/article/secret-behind-baby-boomers-cultural-literacy

    Perhaps even more famous than the literature references are the many ways in which cartoons introduced children to the world of classical music, including both instrumental and operatic selections, one of which is the famous Rabbit of Saville. American film critic Leonard Maltin describes the situation well:

    “An enormous amount of my musical education came at the hands of [Warner Bros. composer] Carl Stalling, only I didn’t realize it, I wasn’t aware, it just seeped into my brain all those years I was watching Warner’s cartoons day after day after day. I learned Liszt’s Second Hungarian Rhapsody because of the Warner Bros. cartoons, they used it so often, famously when Friz Freleng had a skyscraper built to it in Rhapsody and Rivets.”

    But Maltin wasn’t the only one learning from these classical music forays. In fact, as the famous pianist Lang Lang testifies, it was Tom and Jerry’s rendition of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody in The Cat Concerto which first inspired him to start piano at age two.

    If you don’t remember the cartoon, go to the link and watch.
    It’s a hoot — and bound to get someone in the PC World upset.

11. Schroeder lives!

12. Another prodigy at age 7 and earlier*. They really are born that way.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNvAUobb1y4
    Leonard Bernstein presents 7-year-old Yo-Yo Ma’s high-profile debut for President John F. Kennedy

    The New York Times reported that on November 29, 1962, a benefit concert called “The American Pageant of the Arts” was to be held with “a cast of 100, including President and Mrs. Kennedy, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Leonard Bernstein (as master of ceremonies), Pablo Casals, Marian Anderson, Van Cliburn, Robert Frost, Fredric March, Benny Goodman, Bob Newhart and a 7-year-old Chinese cellist called Yo-yo Ma, who was brought to the program’s attention by Casals.”

    As biographer Jim Whiting noted, “the article was noteworthy in two respects. First, it included Yo-Yo’s name in the same sentence as those of two U.S. presidents and eight world-famous performers and writers. Second, Yo-Yo had been identified in a major newspaper for the first time. It would hardly be the last. In the years since then, the New York Times alone has written about him more than 1,000 times.”

    Wikipedia: Yo-Yo Ma (born October 7, 1955) is a Chinese-American cellist.[2] Born in Paris, he spent his schooling years in New York City and was a child prodigy, performing from the age of four and a half.

    I forget sometimes that Ma is about the same age I am!
    But, he hasn’t been dead three years…..

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