Playing chopsticks

Vera Xu Weiling continued her musical journey in her home country after touring as a soloist abroad for 15 years. Jiang Dong

Vera Xu Weiling bought a copy of Leonard Bernstein's score, Serenade for Violin and Orchestra, when she was living in New York 20 years ago. Last month those notes on paper came to life at a special concert in Beijing to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the birth of the late and great composer-conductor.

The concert, featuring Xu and the China Philharmonic Orchestra, was broadcast in New York's Times Square last month on that famous seven-story-high television screen and was a highlight of the 11th Beijing Music Festival, which ended last month.

"It's magic that I bought the score in New York, never used it, and now two decades passed and I took out to play in Beijing and my performance was recorded and returned to broadcast in New York," recalls Xu, in her 40s, reflecting on her extraordinary career and musical journey.

"I left the China Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing for New York in 1980 and 20 years later, I returned to be a faculty member of the conservatory in 2000."

Another meaningful event occurred in 1979, when violin virtuoso Isaac Stern toured Beijing, performing and mentoring young Chinese musicians. Xu was one of the three lucky students he coached and in 1999, Stern returned to Beijing sharing the same stage with his three Chinese students. "It was widely considered a historic event in China's classical music scene," Xu recalls.