Being truthful to the music CHENYIN LI, the young Chinese winner of the 2001 Scottish International Piano Competition, talks to KEITH BRAMICH about experiences, East and West

You could be forgiven for mistaking the young Chinese pianist Chenyin Li, with her curly hair, European looks and playful and lively personality, for an Italian or a Spaniard.

Poised at the very start of a promising professional career, Chenyin's Performing Fellowship at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (where she has been studying with Joan Havill) follows an eventful journey from the Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing (where her teachers were Bi-Gang Chen and Zhong Hui) via the University of Auckland (where she took a Bachelor of Music, studying with Tamas Vesmas, and became New Zealand's 1998 Young Musician of the Year). Her eventful life has included masterclasses with Dimitri Bashkirov, Yvonne Loriod, Boris Berman, Fou Tsong, Murray Perahia, Charles Rosen and Imogen Cooper, and an impressive series of prizes and awards, including, recently, first prizes in the Dudley Millennium, Sheffield and Scottish International Piano Competitions.

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