Magic wind

Daniel Shao plays the flute at a concert staged by the German Radio Orchestra in Beijing. Photo by Zou Hong/China Daily

Daniel Shao's talent has roots in his family tree, Chen Nan reports.

On a recent chilly night, the German Radio Orchestra gave a concert under the baton of conductor Martin Fischer-Dieskau. After the first piece, Wagner's prelude to Lohengrin, a young British man walked onto the stage and greeted the audiences with "da jia hao" (hello everyone). While the audiences cheered for his fluent Mandarin, he put his fingers on his flute and started playing Mozart's Flute Concerto No 1 along with the orchestra.

The young man is Daniel Shao, a 20-year-old musician born to a Chinese father and British mother. Shao has toured with the German Radio Orchestra, performing in Guangzhou, Qingdao and Weifang of Shandong province before the concert in Beijing.

"I always feel connected to China because of my father and I have spent a year living in Beijing at the age of 6, which made me excited to return for the first time as a musician," says Shao, who is currently studying flute and piano at Oxford University.

His young career has been set off not only by winning prizes, such as the first prize at the British Flute Society Competition and being a wind finalist in the BBC Young Musician competition, but also playing concertos with established orchestras, including the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, and Kingston Chamber Orchestra.

German conductor Fischer-Dieskau, who has been the music director of the Taipei Symphony Orchestra for three years, says Shao is a musician with an open heart.