When 24-year-old Taiwanese violinist Lu Kuan-cheng (盧冠呈) began his bid for a chair in the New York Philharmonic, he did so from behind a screen. One auditor who sat on the other side of that screen, Maestro Lorin Maazel, had no clue as to the identity of the person who'd dazzled him with Dvorak' s Concerto. He'd later comment that he hadn't heard the piece played at audition in many years. Then he'd offer Lu a chair as the youngest member of the Philharmonic and the first Taiwanese to ever earn a seat in the orchestra in its 150-year history.
But while his accomplishment makes him a musical ambassador in the eyes of most, Lu is a cultural refugee of the ROC government. As a Taiwanese male who has recently completed his college education, Lu is compelled to serve two years of military service. Failure to do so makes him akin to an outlaw in Taiwan and, should he return home with his orchestra on a planned tour of Asia next year, he'd surely be greeted at the airport with flowers and flashbulbs, then be promptly detained.
That won't happen anytime soon, however. The Philharmonic's official season begins on the Sept. 20, but it is scheduled to first play in Spain at the end of this month.
And so Lu's days are filled with rehearsals and his mind is filled more with preparations for performance than concern over his future. After all, he's spent the better part of two decades to get where he is.
Lu began studying violin at age six with his father, Lu Tseng-chih, then an elementary school music teacher in the family's native Fengshan Township, Kaohsiung County.
"My father had a lot of students," Lu recalled of his childhood. "I was just one of them. But we were quite serious."
Lu said he would practice an hour or two every day even before beginning his formal education.
"It was quite tough, actually, because they were quite demanding at school academically," he said. "So I would have to go through all the regular courses and testing, but then I also had all the bushiban courses in music theory, English and math -- all that stuff."
His family moved to Taichung when Lu began high school, but he spent only one year there before being uprooted again and transplanted in Michigan, where he'd been accepted to the renowned Interlochen Arts Academy, in itself a serious accomplishment for a young music student.
From there he went to Oberlin, where he'd eventually earn the first chair in the university's chamber orchestra, then on to the Manhattan School of Music for his master's degree.
While still studying for his masters, Lu began auditioning for a chair in a symphony orchestra. First Chicago -- it was a nerve-wracking experience, he said, that taught him the importance of confidence in the audition process -- then San Francisco. Fate played a part in his third major audition, for the New York Philharmonic. Five violinists had retired from the orchestra at the end of the previous season and three chairs remained when Lu auditioned for it in May last year. Over 400 of the world's best violinists auditioned.
Lu played a few minutes of music from behind a large screen erected on the stage of Lincoln Center and impressed the judges enough to earn a slot in the second round. He was given several symphony excerpts and a week's time to study them.
When he returned to Lincoln Center a week later, he was asked to play four or five of the pieces. Lu was no longer behind a screen and the Philharmonic' s conductor, Lorin Maazel, and its music director, Kurt Masur, could now see the person they'd previously only heard. Lu again made the cut. Now, with all but 11 musicians eliminated, the board of auditors could sit with each for a longer time, hear them play more music and ask them questions. It was here that Lu's lesson in confidence paid off.
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