Earlier this month, renowned young pianist Wei Luo took to the stage at Shenzhen Concert Hall, performing her recital, Crossing the Storm, for a home audience.
Dressed in an elegant red gown, the 27-year old played classical pieces such as Handel’s lyrical Chaconne in G Major, Schubert’s melancholic Serenade, and Mussorgsky’s virtuosic Pictures at an Exhibition, dazzling the audience with her technical mastery and uncanny ability to draw out the emotion of each composition.
[See more: ‘The first instrument is your mind.’ Meet cellist Lokteng Pao, Macao’s rising musical star]
For the Shenzhen native, the recital was much more than just an opportunity to showcase her skills. It was also a moment for her to reflect on her growth as a pianist.
“I remembered my first formal public performance twenty years ago in the same hall,” she recalls “Time made me strong, more sensible and capital.”
Early musical beginnings
Undeniably, Luo has come a long way since taking her first piano lesson at the age of five. According to the musician, her interest in the keyboard was sparked after hearing the sound of a small piano in her kindergarten music class, which she immediately gravitated towards.
“I told my mum I really want to learn this instrument, and she got me an upright piano for my fifth birthday,” the performer recalls.
Despite neither of her parents being musicians, Luo quickly showed an aptitude for the piano that set her apart as a prodigy. Her affinity for the instrument couldn’t have been more befitting, as her native home of Shenzhen also goes by the moniker of “city of piano” due to its rich music culture.
Early home footage shows the pianist handling the keyboard with an astonishing level of precision, dexterity and speed that hints at someone with decades of experience.
[See more: How the Christmas spirit at a hospital bedside brought Katy Weatherly home to Macao]
By age 6, Luo had already performed her first recital in Hong Kong, with her extraordinary talent fixing her on a path towards further study in classical music and a bonafide career in the field.
“I think at age 8, I was determined that I really wanted to do piano or a music-related job when I grew up,” Luo says.
The Shenzhen Arts School came first at age 9, followed by the primary school affiliated to the Shanghai Conservatory of Music at age 10. These formative experiences proved to be important, with Luo pointing out they “really gave me a strong foundation” in the fundamentals.
Learning from the greats
The turning point came at age 13 when Luo was selected to study at the Curtis Institute of Music – a highly prestigious school in Philadelphia that has an average yearly acceptance rate of just four percent.
It was there she came under the tutelage of Gary Graffman and Robert McDonald – two distinguished mentors who would prove to be highly influential to her development as a classical pianist.
In particular, Luo would develop a close relationship with Graffman – a legendary music educator whose proteges include world-renowned stars such as Lang Lang, Yuja Wang and Haochen Zhang.
“It was very clear that this was a major talent,” Graffman said in an interview in which he recalled Luo’s audition at Curtis. “She played La Valse by Ravel. It’s extremely difficult, and she played it fantastically.”
[See more: Meet Diaw’s Lam Wai Hong, who is nurturing the electronic music scene in Macao]
Comparing the two professors, Luo says Graffman and McDonald both placed emphasis on their students’ personality, encouraging her to find her own voice and style. At the same time, the young pianist points out that the two men had “very different training methods” and “different characters.”
Case in point – they showed their concern for Luo in disparate ways. Luo recalls Graffman making the effort to attend her concert at Curtis’ Field Concert Hall, even though it was a snowy night and he was still carrying his suitcase after having just landed from Asia.
“He came with the luggage and hugged me right after my recital finished,” Luo remembers. “I was really touched because I could see the red eyes he had and [how he was] very tired after a long flight. But he made it to my recital and [had] always been supportive like this.”
McDonald, meanwhile, has a different approach, with Luo stating that the instructor still asks her for recordings to this day.
“We discuss music and life a lot outside of class as well,” she says, adding that McDonald is capable of focusing on one page of Beethoven for two straight hours. “I think he has a different way of caring, but he is also a great professor.”
A life in music
Even before graduating from Curtis in 2022, Luo had already been steadily building a career as a classical pianist. Aside from performing recitals, she released her first self-titled debut album in 2019 under Universal’s DeccaGold label for classical artists.
Luo mentions the studio was very supportive of her ideas throughout the entire process, allowing her to select the types of recordings she wanted, which included compositions by Prokofiev, Shchedrin and Haydn. However, they were initially stumped on the outfit that Luo would don for the album and its cover design.
Thankfully, the young pianist provided them with the necessary inspiration. “I handed my stories and ideas behind each piece to the design team, and they shook my hand after the meeting [to show that] now we know how to design the cover and style for a young lady from China,” she says. “I didn’t want to hear short skirts or stuff like that, so I was wearing white power suits in this album.”
The young musician followed this up with other solo albums such as her 2023 sophomore effort Wei Luo: Gazing, which focuses on the idea of how 19th and early 20th century classical pianists from the West conceptualised the Orient through their music.
[See more: Indie forever: Chris B’s lifelong devotion to Hong Kong’s live music scene]
That album made it into Apple Music’s top 100 songs of the year, and was followed by Luo’s most recent solo work, Through the Storm (2025), which touches on the theme of music as a means to overcome challenges.
These days, Luo stages anywhere between 40 to 50 recitals around the world each year. Still, there are some venues that she would like to try outside of a concert hall.
“I want to do something in nature or on the beach or in the mountains because we have many spots like that in China and worldwide,” Luo says, adding that she would love to use the Terracotta Army in Xi’an as the backdrop for one of her shows. On the inspiration, Luo notes, “I was doing a concert in Sicily and they have protected, ancient architecture from the fourth to fifth century.”
More than just a pianist
Although the keyboard is a central part of Luo’s life, it is by no means the be all and end all. The young pianist also dabbles in other forms of artistic passions such as poetry and film. In fact, some of her writings have been published in major Chinese cultural magazines such as the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) magazine and Sanlian Lifeweek.
Luo’s interest in poetry can be attributed to her mother – a literature major who would always read poetry to her before bed. “I think that really impacted my way of thinking and my way of playing,” she says.
Among the various poems she’s written, some of them were for her favourite composer – the 20th century Russian pianist and composer Sergei Prokofiev.
“My first set of poetry was dedicated to Prokofiev because during his period of time, life was really difficult and complex, but he has that character that’s so brave and so naive,” she points out. “I think these are really rare qualities in humans. I really admire that.”
For Luo, poetry and music are not mutually exclusive, as illustrated by a 2023 multi-artform project she showcased at New York’s Blanc Gallery, which mixed music, modern dancing, poetry and installation into one cohesive package.
More recently, Luo has tried her hands at filmmaking, co-writing, starring and producing the short film The Melody of Twilight for her 2025 album Through the Storm. In that production, Luo played a young pianist named Li Sha, who deals with depression through the power of music.
[See more:‘Music is a friend that accompanies you through life.’ Andrea Bocelli talks with The Bay]
When asked why she made the film, Luo explains it was a way to make her music relevant for the younger generation, whom she says “like to see some pictures, films or stories behind the music and artist.”
The Melody of Twilight is just part of Luo’s wider goal of bringing classical music to a wider audience by creating “more scenarios” for them to listen and relate to such music.
“I want to show the world that I am doing that, and not just playing all Chopin Études in one night,” Luo says. “I think we can do more than that because music – no matter what kind – is a part of culture and our lives.”
Still, Luo admits that there’s “a long way to go.” But if her upcoming schedule is any indication, she’s more determined than ever before to reach her ambition of bringing classical music to different locations and expressing herself in a variety of ways.
On 6 April, she’ll be playing a Grieg concerto at the Beijing Concert Hall with the China National Orchestra. Later that same month, she’ll be heading south to Qingdao to perform Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2, followed by shows in Vancouver and Sichuan in May.
Even as Luo finds herself constantly on the move, she admits to never feeling uprooted. As the young pianist explains, “I feel like being on stage or around the piano is home for me.”
