Piano prodigy Nguyen Viet Trung performs during his interview with Thanh Nien Daily

Nguyen Viet Trung turns thirteen this year yet already the piano prodigy is the toast of Poland.

Young Trung has won several awards in Poland in his six years of piano studies, coming second in a competition for young pianists in 2004, winning the Emmy Alberg competition in 2005, getting a special prize at a Chopin competition and the Golden Note for best performer of a Mozart composition in 2006, and being judged the best performer of twentieth-century compositions the following year.

In 2008, he took second place against pianists three to four years older in an international competition in Poland named after the famous artists Ludwik Stefanski and Halina Czerny Stefanska.

On the final night, the lad originally from Vietnam moved the audience profoundly with his passionate rendition of a Mozart concerto.

Trung had similar success with everybody who heard him on his visits to Russia, Hungary and Ukraine. Indeed, the media in the homeland of Abeles honored Trung by describing him as “the music star of Poland whose hands touch every audience.”

His parents are not musicians, and Trung only got acquainted with music when he went along to his sister’s piano class and mucked about on the keys for a bit. The professor who taught the class, Filomena Dziedzic, recognized his musical aptitude at once and urged Trung’s parents to take him to a piano teacher.

“More than anybody it was she (Dziedzic) who helped Trung achieve what he has. My wife and

I know little about music, so all we can do is encourage and take care of him,” said the boy’s businessman father, Nguyen Van Than.

With the instruction he received from Dziedzic, Trung sailed through the entrance examination for Poland’s national music academy at the ripe age of seven years.

For now he and his mother will continue to stay in Poland to further his piano studies, even though he misses his father and brother in Hanoi. Fortunately Dad travels to Poland several times a year to see them.

“Trung is very committed,” Than said. “They’ll probably remain in Poland until he graduates from university.”

After a day of classes at a French school, Trung spends at least two and a half hours at the piano every evening and rarely gets to bed before midnight. “I have next to no time for fun although I do like playing games and reading stories online when I can,” he told Thanh Nien Daily ahead of his first Vietnam performance in Hanoi on Sunday.

“Sometimes I feel tired and wish class would end early,” Trung said with a smile.

He is smaller than most boys his age but makes up for it with glowing self confidence. “I have never been anxious about competing. I love to perform before an audience, in fact the bigger the audience, the better I play.”

Trung, who idolizes the famous Vietnamese pianist Dang Thai Son, wants to turn professional when he has completed his formal studies. If his musical career thrives, he would like to “live and work in Vietnam as it is my home.”

Despite living in Poland since he was three months old, Trung speaks fluent Vietnamese. “I can also speak Polish and French, but my father insists everybody in my family use Vietnamese at home.”

Trung and fellow youngsters Luu Hong Quang of Vietnam and Aleksander Krzyanowski of Poland will perform at the Hanoi Opera House tomorrow under the baton of Le Phi Phi.

“Vietnam’s Concert for Young Talented Pianists” will feature five solo performances by Trung along with selections of Chopin and Tchaikovsky from Quang and Krzyanowski.

Nineteen-year-old Luu Hong Quang studied piano at the Hanoi Conservatory of Music from 1996 to 2006, when he won a scholarship to the Australian National Academy of Music.

Quang has gained international recognition by winning the Prize for Excellence at the 2006 Asian Chopin Competition, second prize at the Val Tidone International Music Competition in Italy in the same year, and top prize at Australia’s 2008 Recital Awards.

Aleksander Krzyanowski has won several competitions in his homeland Poland as well as Ukraine, and has toured Japan, Spain, Russia and elsewhere. Tuoi Tre reports that Krzyanowski is now studying under People’s Artist Dang Thai Son.

Trung is sure he and the others won’t let the Hanoi audience down on Sunday.

Reported by Bao Anh