Violinist Li Chuanyun. Photo provided to China Daily

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Born into a musical family in the coastal city of Qingdao, Shandong province, Li moved to Hong Kong at age 6. A child prodigy, Li began learning the violin at age 3 and won his first championship at the Beijing Youth and Junior Violin Competition at 5.

He received the top award at the Fifth Wieniawski International Youth Violin Competition at 11, becoming the youngest winner in the competition's history.

Late US violinist Ruggiero Ricci once said of Li: "If China wants to have a great violinist, they have one. All they have to do is look after him."

In March, Li played Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto with the Bravura Philharmonic Orchestra at Princeton University's Richardson Auditorium.

"He's a sensation," says Bravura Philharmonic music director Chiu-Tze Lin. "His technical skill is just unmatched. He's virtuosic. He's like the Paganini of the 21st century."

Li is best known by Chinese audiences for his violin performance in the 2002 film Together directed by Chen Kaige. The story explores the love between a father and a son who plays the violin. Li performed and recorded all the soundtrack's solo violin music.

"It's unusual. For a child at such a young age, he made the movie shine," Chen says.

Li's distinctive stage image was formed while he pursued his studies in the United States. In 1996, Li was admitted to the Juilliard School with a full scholarship, where he studied under the instruction of Dorothy DeLay, one of the world's most famous violin teachers, and the renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman.

"DeLay told me that if classical music stops progressing and evolving, audiences will fall away and we will lose it one day," Li says. "All violinists wonder how to interpret the composers' music and make the music their own. I am one of them.

"The violin is like water to me - it is indispensable and vital. I play it for fun, without any pressure."

After the Beijing concert, Li will tour the country and take his dazzling notes and technique to more audiences. When he is compared to Chinese pianists Lang Lang and Li Yundi, he becomes shy and humble.

"I am not good-looking. I wish I can be as handsome as them," he says.

If you go

7:30 pm, April 27. Poly Theater, 14 Dongzhimen Nan Dajie (Street), Dongcheng district, Beijing. 010-8478-5484.