I recently came across this stunning video of a four-year-old, absolutely adorable Chinese boy playing the piano. As the link suggests, this boy plans piano better than any master-wow! I might even venture to say that he, at age 4, is on the same level as our favorite pianist and recent interviewee Lang Lang! [Perhaps Lang Lang will take him in his next master class?]
The first question a viewer might ask, though, is “is this real?” As a pianist myself, it’s pretty clear to me that it’s real — just look at how the father coaxes the playful child into giving us a rendition and how naturally his fingers fly across the piano. Like Mozart, this boy is obviously a prodigy, and by age 10, there’s no doubt he’ll be a master in his own right and perhaps even take on a Mozart-like composition status in the 21st century.
The more interesting question, however, is the question of nature vs. nurture. For this boy, the “nature” side seems to dominate (after all, at age 4, he can’t have had many years of piano nurture training). Comparing this boy to other young Chinese children brings up an interesting question of how far parents should push their kids towards success in a certain field — like piano, for instance — when their child shows minimal natural talent? My answer is that for things like music and piano, where only the top 0.00001% really make it, training for those of us who are not naturally gifted should be correlated with the spillover benefits from the training — for example, for piano, these spillovers include brain development, coordination, and general music / cultural knowledge and awareness. In the Chinese culture, though, too often we see parents pushing their children to the brink in order to cultivate a young Mozart who may or may not want to be a Mozart, and may or may not even have the preconditions necessary to become the next Mozart. Instead, we should focus on nurturing our (everyday) children to become citizens well-versed in music with great coordination skills, and leave it to themselves to discover their true talents and passions.
我最近见到这个超可爱的四岁小男孩弹钢琴的短片；他弹的钢琴比什么好手弹得好，真的有如网页的描述。我觉得，我们最近采访了朗朗；有可能他四岁就已经达到了我们最喜欢的钢琴师的水平！朗朗有可能接收他为下个大师班的学生吗？
见到这短片后的第一个问题一定是＂真的吗？＂身为一个钢琴士，对我来说，很明显这是真的：看看他爸爸哄他弹钢琴的方式，也瞧瞧他的手指弹时多自然。这孩子很明显就像莫扎特，是天才，神童。相信他十岁时就会已经成长成个钢琴大师，肯能变成二十一时代的莫扎特。
比较有趣的问题可是天赋对练习。这孩子的天赋很特出，很明显：四岁小孩不可能练了好几年的钢琴，对吗？可是他（和别的孩子）的家长应该鼓励得多远呢？如果孩子们本身没天赋，不停地把他推到成功应该吗？我的回答是，有关于钢琴和音乐这种事呢，只有最高的大师会得到成功，最多一万个人之内会有一个。其他我们没天赋的人呢，不是不应该练，可是应该为别的理由练习，好像为了脑部成熟，手眼协调能力，和文化知识，而学钢琴。虽然他们没有必要的天赋，但是，在我们这华族社会内，我们经常见到家长们不停地压孩子们，逼他们一直练，练到莫扎特水平为止。为何如此？与其如此，不如使用这努力来培养我们的孩子为认识音乐和艺术，拥有好手眼协调能力的良好公民，而把他们自己真正的兴趣，梦想和希望就留给他们决定吧。