The first thing Jing Qiao did when she heard that she had just taken first prize in the inaugural Competition for Young String Soloists was hide.No acceptance speech, no posing for pictures, no curtain calls.

“I just ran out the door and hid in the corner and called my teacher,” Qiao said. Her teacher — acclaimed Oberlin College violin professor Milan Vitek — was as surprised as she was.

COURTESY OF BRIAN VAN NORMAN

Jing Qiao performs at the Young String Soloists competition in Raleigh, N.C.

The competition — sponsored by Chamber of the Orchestra of the Triangle in North Carolina — attracted young talent (between 16 and 23) from across the country and awarded the winner $10,000 and an invitation to play with the orchestra in its next season.

For Qiao, 21, the whole experience exceeded expectation. She heard about the competition in a magazine and decided to fly to Raleigh — at the very least, it would be a vacation from her demanding studies at Oberlin.

In fact, Raleigh, with its hot, humid weather, reminded Qiao of Singapore, where she attended high school. But, her trip was much more than a mere vacation.

Nervous, among some of the most talented young musicians in the country, Qiao took out her violin, performed Carl Nielsen’s “Violin Concerto” and subsequently blew away the judges.

If you haven’t heard of Nielsen, you’re not alone. In the pantheon of great composers — Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven — Nielsen is often overshadowed and not commonly played at competitions. Indeed, most of the other 36 competitors stuck to the tried and true.

But her unlikely selection quickly signaled to the judges that Qiao knew what she was doing.

Lorenzo Muti, a judge in the competition and conductor for the Orchestra of the Triangle, called Qiao’s rendition sensitive, evocative and full of a “tremendous scope of colors.”

“It takes guts to come to a competition with the piece she performed,” he said.

For Qiao, the competition marks the first time she has won a national competition, but she is hoping it marks the beginning of a trend. She will pack up her violin next month and head to Denmark for another competition.

But ultimately she would love to wind up playing music in Germany.

“It’s a very musical country,” she said, “with a lot of history. Mozart, Beethoven, Bach.”

Contact Michael Baker at 329-7128 or mbaker@chroniclet.com. 

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