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And someday a Steinway piano
MengMeng’s Boston grand piano helps her prepare for a career as a professional pianist.
Twelve-year-old Yue Meng Sun – known as MengMeng – loves the piano. Her favorite artist is Yundi Li and she can’t get enough of concertos by Chopin. So what is her favorite piano? A Steinway-designed Boston grand.
From the moment she saw her first piano on a visit to a music store at the age of three, MengMeng felt a strong attraction to the instrument. By 5, she started piano lessons. And now, seven years later, she is attending middle school in the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, after her family relocated from their hometown of Henan two years ago just so she could continue her music education.
But with this advanced study at China’s leading musical institution came the need for a piano better than the one MengMeng had been playing. A teacher’s recommendation steered MengMeng and her parents to the quality and reputation of Steinway-designed Boston pianos.
“Boston is the best choice for a piano student like you, if your family could afford it,” the teacher told MengMeng’s parents, who, in turn, visited Xing De Wei, Beijing’s dealer for the family of Steinway-designed pianos. For the next year, the family returned again and again with MengMeng to compare and play various pianos.
Eventually, they chose a 6-foot-2-inch Boston grand piano “because of its superior touch, expression and voice,” MengMeng says, adding that “the sound of the Boston is more suitable for classical music.”
Since its founding in 1950, the conservatory has become a music-education center that trains professional musicians, as well as a research-composition-performance center offering a complete system of courses at all levels of learning … from elementary school through postgraduate studies including doctoral degrees.
And MengMeng is thriving in the middle-school program, which offers courses in piano, orchestral instruments, traditional instruments and music theory. In fact, she recently placed sixth in the 71st Steinway & Sons International Youth Piano Competition … a major step in her quest to become a professional pianist.
MengMeng is thrilled with her Boston grand piano, crediting its Steinway design for strides she has made in her musical studies.