At just 28, Li Xincao is widely regarded as the hottest conductor in China. Already a resident conductor of the mainland's top ensemble, the China National Symphony Orchestra (CNSO), Li became the first principal conductor of the National Ballet Orchestra of Beijing earlier this year.
That's a high-profile role - the company was renamed in January by no less than President Jiang Zemin. But these are only the most recent honours for Li, here to conduct an all-Beethoven concert with the Hong Kong Sinfonietta this weekend.
Li has always been in awe of Beethoven. The first work he conducted in his early teens was Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, the 'Pastoral', which he performed with a student ensemble he single-handedly organised and worked with for three years at the Yunnan Arts School.
This Sunday, audiences at the Alles Beethoven concert will hear the first movement of that symphony, as well as the Third Piano Concerto (soloist pianist Carol Yu), and the Coriolan Overture, which is part of a commissioned programme to test the acoustics of the new Yuen Long theatre's concert hall.
This is the first time Li has worked with a local orchestra. 'Their musical calibre and responsiveness are pretty solid and competent,' Li said during rehearsals just hours after he arrived.
Li is a meticulous and uncompromising conductor, stopping the strings every few bars to talk the musicians through interpretation. Yet afterwards, he is more sanguine. 'No one could fully understand the sound of Beethoven, such as the brooks and woods depicted in the 'Pastoral', without being in Vienna,' he says with a shrug. 'Just as one has to be at the lake in Wothersee in southern Austria to know why Brahms wrote both his Second Symphony and the Violin Concerto in D Major, because that's the only key that would fit in with that environment.' Not being able to fully appreciate the context has hampered the growth of Western classical music in China, Li feels. Mainland musicians are generally good players, but their lack of knowledge of music theory has been another major obstacle behind the mainland's music development, he says.
Li describes himself as cautiously optimistic about the future of symphonic music on the mainland, but says the most pressing issue is still money. 'The Government subsidises the CNSO with less than one sixth of our annual revenue. To make ends meet, we are like beggars knocking at the door of potential sponsors.' Given all that, it's going to take at least another 100 years for the mainland's symphony orchestras to reach the calibre of top Western orchestras such as the Vienna Philharmonic.