Every weekend, Hanoians have a chance to enjoy a LUALA concert along the pavement on Ly Thai To Street, conducted by a violin prodigy named Xuan Huy, who is the soul of the concert.

He sits among string musical instrument artists and plays the violin with total abandon--closed eyes and deeply absorbed in the sound of his music.

Born in 1972 in Hanoi, Huy comes from a traditionally musical family. His father studied the violin at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music while his mother followed the path of a vocalist.

Xuan Huy came first in his graduation test at the Hanoi National Conservatory of Music, after which he attended the State Musical College, then the Tchaikovsky National Academy of Music (former Kiev Conservatory) as an undergraduate.

He was a member of the Princess Diana Century Orchestra and travelled round-the-world on tours.

Recently, Huy came back and worked for the National Orchestra, acting as chief conductor for the LUALA orchestra. Something that very few people know about him is that he is also a skillful artisan with golden hands in making violin instruments.

His concept of a good violin in an orchestra is that the instrument must be handmade, as violins made from machines have no soul. These handmade violins can be kept for 500 years, and Huy has a strong belief that the violins he makes will be played hundreds of years later in some remote corner of the world.

It takes him four months to complete making one violin. Regardless of the time frame to make a violin, it is important to choose the kind of wood used very carefully. Even after finishing the instrument, Huy said people should play the instrument for years to understand the instrument.

Huy compares making a violin to having a baby and like a parent also understand and lead it in the correct way. He might be influenced by the film ‘The Red Violin’ featuring a talented artisan named Nicolo Bussotti who makes violins from his love, desire and pain over his wife’s death at child birth.

He believes each violin has a soul which is greatly dependent upon its maker and artist who plays it. Some talented artists sometimes make mistakes on stage just because they don’t understand fully the soul of the instrument, said Huy.

Among the violins in his collection, several were made by Italian artisans in the 18th century. In addition, out of the violins that people bring to Huy for repair, some are a few hundred years old. Some violins made by Huy have travelled to distant countries across the globe.

There is a deep belief that hundreds of year’s later, one of Xuan Huy’s violins will be played in a dome of a theater in Vienna or Berlin or perhaps his violins will become a precious heirloom of a family and transferred from generation to generation as does gold or other valuable jewellery items.

SGGP