Li Chuan Yun does it again...

How can any violin music aficionados miss a concert by this man! And yet again he showed his brilliance on stage. I can see him perform live endless yet come out of the hall with an entirely new experience, such is his creativity onstage. As usual, technique is always assured and nothing seems out of reach with his technical virtuosity. He makes every single piece of music that he plays new to the audience with slight improvisational touches everywhere.

The concert programme mirrors that of his DVD with Poloarts La Ronde Des Lutins, and yet nothing beats seeing him performing live. Gershwin was particularly sprightly coming from him, and the additional embellishments in La Ronde Des Lutins, already chokeful with fiendish phrases, cannot fail to amaze.

And he gifted the audience with not one, not two, but three encore pieces of solo violin music, something virtually unheard of in concerts featuring the instrument. He first stunned us with (What i think is) the Chaconne from the movie 'The Red Violin', blazing through it with terrifying momentum, and then striking the last note so hard that the bow knocked off the violin with a thud and flew to the ground! A very dramatic piece of showmanship definitely.

Next came the 24^th caprice of Paganini - none of the variation was played 'straight', every single one of it had a touch of Chuan Yun's difference to them. To round it off, he gave us an entirely new smooth jazzy beat variation of his own making, now how many violinists can boast of playing such improvisations on stage?

Finally, to round off this over-the-top astounding performance, he dismantled his bow, wrapped the bowhair over the strings and therefore sandwiching his violin with the stick on the other side, held it together with his right hand, and played a fully developed short composition on all four strings simultaneously throughout, making it sound like an accordian piece and knocking on the violin's back with the stick at intervals for hilarious effects. That stunt alone is worth the price of the ticket, which I paid a miserable $15 for.

Geniuses doesn't come any better than this.