Vanessa Mae returns to Belarus with new hits

By Anastasia Shoplya

The princess of four strings plans to conquer again the hearts of Belarusians with masterpieces of world music in contemporary and techno-arrangements

Remarkably, Vanessa Mae was born on the same day as one of the greatest violinist of all time — Niccolò Paganini. She was born on October 27th, but almost hundred years later. When she was 13 years old, she became an entrant in the Guinness Book of Records as the ‘youngest musician, who has performed all the violin concerts by Tchaikovsky and Beethoven’. Vanessa Mai is a true cosmopolitan, being Chinese on her mother’s side and Thai on her father’s. She is a British subject, yet records her discs in Los Angeles.

Vanessa gained international success in 1995, when her fourth (in succession) and first (in pop stylistics) record — The Violin Player — ‘conquered’ the peaks of the most prestigious hit parades of the planet. Over four months, the album went gold, with a circulation of over 8 million copies.
The artiste brings her best compositions to Minsk, and the audience will hear both new melodies and the greatest hits of Vanessa.

During her performances, Vanessa plays various models of violins, with her major instrument being the Gizmo classical violin, created in 1761 by the Guadagnini family. It was bought by Vanessa’s parents at the auction for 250,000 Pounds Sterling. She also has a white violin with the colours of the American flag, as well as a Zeta Jazz Model silver-white electrical cello and several Ted Brewer Violins instruments. The critics called Vanessa’s genre as a ‘violin crossover’ — a mix of classical music in contemporary arrangements.