To a lot of people, music is a luxury they enjoy but can live without. To young pianist Yao Lan, music has become a necessity -- listening to Mozart in the morning, Bach at noon and Rachmaninov in the evening, very much in the same way people eat breakfast, lunch and dinner.

At 23, Yao is the youngest piano teacher at the Central Conservatory of Music. She will give her concert on Sunday at the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing, playing Mozart's Concerto KV 488 in A Major.

The passion of her mother, Zhou Lijun, for piano meant Yao started to learn when she was barely 4. As a child, she would look at the piano with marvel and wonder, but she had no urge to touch the keys and was eventually pinned to the piano stool by her ambitious mother.

Yao still remembers when she learned playing, her mother put 10 chocolates on the piano. "I was allowed to eat one after I practiced each piece of music," Yao said. Her playing became pleasant to the ear and she started to enjoy showing off.

Her mother took her to different piano teachers. In 1988 Yao started formal training when the family moved to Xiamen in East China's Fujian Province.

"A turning point in my life came when I had the opportunity to take part in a national piano competition," Yao said.

She played in the Guomao Cup Children's Piano Competition in 1988 with Pan Yiming and Ni Hongjing, two prominent educators of music, as judges.

"I did not know how important this contest was. Afterwards, I was told the two teachers said I played as well as students at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing," Yao said. Yao's family moved to Beijing in 1989.

She scored the highest marks in her exam that year. It took her eight years to finish her studies there before continuing at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

"Music is part of my life," said Yao. "It's as if a person cannot live without speaking. It is like talking to me."

To Yao, music is a kind of imagination and concept that is very hard to put into words. "The good thing is that music is without boundaries," said Yao. "I could play music with students who come from other countries for hours. We understand each other's common language perfectly," she said.

She won the best performance prize in the Ettlingen Piano Competition in Germany when she was 16.

She performs four to six times in Germany each year. In April or May, Yao may also play with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. She will have several solo recitals in Germany and some concerto concerts in Germany in May of 2005, in addition to participating in the Hannover Piano Festival in Germany next September.

It is not just performance satisfaction that Yao gets. She loves passing her gift onto others. She now teaches first year college students. "Both the students and I get a sense of achievement with their progress," she said, who returned to the Central Conservatory of Music this year.

"I will make up the missing classes when I return from performances," Yao said.

"I feel lucky that I chose music and if I had to choose again, I would do the same."

(China Daily December 8, 2004)