Yundi Li shot to international stardom when he took out the grand prize at the International Chopin Piano Competition in Poland in the year 2000, becoming the youngest ever winner at the age of 18, and the first Chinese pianist to receive top honours. He was signed to the Deutsche Grammophon label by the age of 20, and has since recorded and toured prodigiously. Following the success of 2018’s Australian tour, Yundi will return in February, visiting Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane and Sydney as part of his Sonata World Tour 2020.

Yundi Li

Even if Yundi’s piano lessons started “late” at the age of seven, his musical education began when he was young. “My parents often used the radio to play music at home,” he tells Limelight. “We used to sing together. This is my earliest impression of music.”

Yundi’s mother used to be a ballet dancer. “She liked music very much,” he says. “She is the one who brought me on the path of music.” It wasn’t the piano that first attracted the young Yundi. “The first instrument I learned was the accordion,” he says. As the story goes, he was so captivated by seeing an...