Piano prodigy makes City debut

Anh will appear with the Ho Chi Minh City Ballet and Symphony Orchestra and present Liszt’s Piano Concerto No 1 in E Flat Major and Grande Polonaise Brilliant by Chopin. Renowned conductor Tran Vuong Thach will direct the 30-minute performance.

To open the o­ne-hour concert, Anh will perform solo romantic pieces by Mozart, Chopin and Liszt. She will also perform folk tunes by the late composer Nguyen Van Thuong, o­ne of the country’s most talented classical music artists.

“I decided to perform in Ho Chi Minh City because my parents told me a lot about the beautiful place where they grew up, lived and worked,” said the 18-year-old pianist, who was born in Australia.

Anh’s love for piano began when she was o­nly 15 months old, when her parents, both musicians who graduated from the Ho Chi Minh City Conservatory of Music, began teaching her.

By the age of four, she enrolled in a special training programme for gifted young musicians at the Sydney Conservatory of Music. A year later, she gave her first live performance o­n MBS-FM radio and since then has given numerous media performances.

Anh received her associates’ degree in piano when she was nine.

In 2003, she was selected to perform at the Australian Festival of Chamber Music in townsville, Queensland. Her performance made a strong impression o­n both professional artists and audiences.

She went o­n to win a prize for young artists at the Vienna International Pianists’ Summer Festival in Austria.

Anh has also taken several international music prizes, including this year’s Yamaha Youth Piano
Competition and the Kawai Open Piano Award.

After scoring second highest in the nation in 2003 o­n Australia’s high school final examinations, Anh received a scholarship to study at the prestigious Colburn School of Performing Arts in Los Angeles starting next year.

The concert takes place at 8pm o­n Friday at the Ho Chi Minh Conservatory of Music, 112  Nguyen Du street, district 1.