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Six Australian piano prodigies are learning early that life is not fair in the brutal world of elite competition, as they vie for the international spotlight at the Lev Vlassenko Piano Festival, currently being held in Brisbane.
Local boy Jeremy Sun is one of six youngsters taking the stage during the 10-day festival, fitting the event in around their calendars of international events.
His curiosity for the keys began while watching his sister play six years ago, and it was not long before he thought it was about time he got himself a teacher.
The 12-year-old now slays the likes of Mozart and Franz Liszt in auditoriums from Milan to Portugal and Germany.
And he has a string of awards to match his travels, only ever having placed first, second or third in competitions.
While Jeremy is too young to compete in the festival, he and five other young maestros from around Australia and the globe still have a chance to be on that stage.
Jeremy, Fiona Feng, 10, Chris Tsang, 12, Rae-Wue Pung, 14, and Emily Zhou and Joshua Noronha, both 15, went up against each other, with two selected to play while the jury deliberate at the competition's grand final on Friday night.
'Think of them as rivals'
Acclaimed pianist and competition chair Peter Donohoe said young performers faced great psychological pressure.
"You're playing in front of people you know, some people you don't know," he said.
"You can't help but think of them as rivals, even though they're very friendly with each other."
"It's quite a severe test of your psychological state, but of course that state is very important for being a performer.
"We do our level best to be as fair as possible — maybe in the end it isn't possible to be fair, but then life isn't."
Like Jeremy, each of the young pianists started playing early, dedicating more than half their lives to the craft.
Singapore-based Rae-Wue began playing at just three years old and she said she practises at least six hours a day.
"I'm home-schooled so I can practice more," she laughed, saying she felt happiest when she performed.
"That's when you know your hard work has paid off, you know all those hours practising … you can see how well you play.
Joshua, from Perth, said he hoped to turn the hobby into a full-time career.
For him, performing in public is a way to communicate your ideas with the audience.
"Even if they're different nationalities and you can't understand their language, music's like a universal language," he said.
"It's amazing to do something … to have a job that you just wake up every day and think 'I love this', and that's the way I feel about music."
A balancing act
Mother Molly Moo is careful the pressure is not too much for her son Chris.
She said prior to every practice, her son would outline what he needed to work on and what he hoped to achieve by the end of the session.
"So he doesn't need to practise six hours," she said.
For Ms Moo, balancing Chris' other interests is equally as important as his music.
"Chris is a very active boy — he plays basketball, soccer, swimming, he loves drawing and writing comics," she said.
"And especially in music, you need to be very creative, you need to feel and see many different things."
Topics: people, human-interest, music, arts-and-entertainment, brisbane-4000, qld, australia