"I think it's really interesting to focus on this French style. Just now, onstage, we rehearsed many detailed aspects — how to make it not sound Russian, not German… I've done some study — it's not German beer, it's French champagne," he adds.

"We worked on very refined interpretations from an artistic stylistic perspective. I think the NCPA team responded extremely quickly, and during our two-and-a-half-hour rehearsal, the conductor Lyu Jia and I found a lot of that so-called French Romantic feel."

In 2021, the pianist opened his studio in the NCPA Taihu Stage Art Center in Beijing's Tongzhou district. The stage-art complex was launched in 2018 by the NCPA, an iconic venue in downtown Beijing.