LookAtVietnam – Hard work and practise paid off for 12-year-old violinist Ho Hoang Khanh Van when she beat over 100 competitors from around Southeast Asia to take top honours

Making friends: Ho Hoang Khanh Van (left) won first at the ASEAN International Concerto Competition in Indonesia last month.

On presenting her with the gold medal in Indonesia, the jury board pledged to invite her to other international music competitions in the region.

“These first successes will be good start for Van’s musical development. I believe that, with her outstanding music ability, she can compete successfully in other major international music contests,” Linh said.

Van began learning violin at the age of four when her family was living in the city of Minsk in Belarus, where Van was born.

She studied initially under Belarussian professor Vladimir Khazanov, who thought she had talent and a special memory, able to learn a piece without investing nearly as much time as his other pupils. Khazanov said she was able to play difficult tunes as a child by learning them step-by-step.

She won many prizes while in Belarus, including second prize in the 2004 Belarus National Violin Competition and first prize in the Minsk Violin Contest.

When Van’s family returned to Viet Nam in 2005, she continued her studies at the National Academy of Music and won third prize at Viet Nam’s Autumn Melodies in 2007 at the age of 10.

Khanh says his daughter is not competitive, especially compared to other young teen “artists” these days.

“Of course I want to do well in competitions,” Van said. “But I don’t feel obliged to be the best all the time… Music definitely accounts for a large part of my time but I think I’d be unhappy if it became everything to me.”

Van said she liked to compete on international stages to improve her skills and meet new friends, but she said she was uncomfortable with ranking musicians as if they were athletes. The process of preparing for a competition was more important to her than the results, she said.

“Competing at the International Music Competition in Indonesia last month, I made friends from various ASEAN nations,” Van said. “We often talk about music lessons and playing techniques and chat over the internet about our countries.”

Van is also a student in Ha Noi’s Trung Vuong Secondary School’s English Specialised Class.

“My daughter’s strong point is linguistics, writing poems and funny stories as well as translating short stories from Russian into Vietnamese,” said Khanh, who said she also does very well in English and likes reading books very much.

Her funny stories have been published in several Vietnamese newspapers and magazines.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News