Junior Sophia Lin, then 11, sat uncomfortably at the piano bench. Before her was a Steinway grand piano that dwarfed her tiny frame. Lin was about to compete in the 10th Annual Russian Music Competition, an international contest among students from countries such as China, Ukraine, Hungary and South Korea.
The competition, hosted at Le Petit Trianon in San Jose, is open to the public but requires competitors to submit an application with a recommendation letter and YouTube link to a sample performance.
After glancing anxiously at the audience in front of her, Lin began to play Bach’s “BWV 860 Prelude and Fugue in G Major.” Soon she finished the first of four pieces she performed that day.
Lin took home third place and the “Most Promising Young Talent” award in the Junior Division, but more significantly, Lin realized she “was good at piano, not just normal.”
When she started learning the instrument, Lin recalled, she “wasn’t passionate about music” because her parents had pushed her into it. She started competing at age 6 because her teacher, Mountain View resident Anna Semyanovsky, asked her to, not because she enjoyed playing.
“I hated practicing and would always slack, and the only time I’d get into trouble was [when] I didn’t practice,” Lin said.
After her finish in the prestigious competition, however, Lin became more motivated to practice and went on to do even better. For instance, in seventh grade, the Chopin Foundation, a national non-profit that helps talented young musicians in “their struggle for career recognition,” selected her to play in a recital. In high school, she was admitted to Music@Menlo, a prestigious chamber music festival.
“I feel like I have something to prove,” she said. “I’m inspired to work hard for myself, and I’m motivated to practice by imagining what will happen if I don’t practice.”
In order to perform well, Lin said that she practices one to two hours on most weekdays and three to four hours in her free time. She also listens to and takes notes on other pianists’ interpretations of pieces she is playing.
Still, her success has not come without struggle. During freshman year, she suffered her first “failure” at a piano competition when she didn’t perform up to her high standards.
“I had to play three movements of a concerto and I’d finished memorizing the last movement the week before,” Lin said. “I failed … I was depressed afterwards [because] it was really humiliating.”
After that experience, she vowed to work harder even as school became more challenging.
“When I am stressed out, I just stop and play the piano because it makes me forget everything else that’s going on in my life,” she said.
Lin said her greatest challenge with piano is her small hands. While the typical pianist can reach around a 10th, Lin can reach only octaves.
For instance, Lin said that she spent the “entire summer” learning a Chopin Scherzo. By the time the school year started, she had perfected every measure — except for 10 measures at the end that had too many large chords.
Lin ended up abandoning the piece for Ravel’s “Jeux d’eau,” an Impressionistic piece that translates roughly to “Fountains” or “Playing Water.” The piece’s soft and playful sound highlights Lin’s musicality.
Lin said she also enjoys being “reckless” on the piano, especially with contemporary pieces.
“People usually haven’t heard of [them so] people [won’t] have certain expectations of me or the piece,” she said. “You can also make some mistakes that people [won’t] hear.”
Currently, Lin’s main focus is “Chopin Concerto No. 2,” Mvt. 1. After she won the El Camino Youth Symphony (ECYS) 2014-2015 Piano Competition, she was invited to perform the piece with their Sinfonietta Symphony.
“Playing with [an] orchestra is more stressful because you can’t mess up when you’re playing,” Lin said. “You have to play it so much that your fingers just know how to do it.”
In the future, Lin said she plans to pursue her passion by majoring in piano performance in college, in addition to another more practical major.
Accordingly, she has been thinking about colleges in terms of the strength of their music programs. Some of her ideal choices are New York University, Oberlin, University of Southern California and UC Berkeley.
For now, she is working on her college audition pieces. Her repertoire includes a Bach Prelude and Fugue, Haydn Sonata, Lizst Etude, Prokofiev Sonata and Shostakovich Prelude and Fugue in addition to her Ravel piece.
During college, Lin said she hopes to take advantage of performance opportunities to build her reputation. In the long run, she hopes to become a piano teacher.
“[Piano] is what makes me special,” she said. “I’m an introvert, so I don’t really talk; [instead,] I talk through my music.”
