What is it about Mozart’s music that responds to young people, or at least the young at heart? The question was answered, if not resolved, in late September at the Third Zhuhai International Mozart Competition for violinists (and pianists). The violin competition finals took place over a week in the gilded Mozart Concert Hall of the Zhuhai Huafa & CPAA Grand Theatre, named after the real estate group that sponsors the competition and has developed acre upon acre of the city’s sprawling suburbs. You won’t find the theatre on Google Maps, which has inconveniently submerged a swathe of southern Zhuhai beneath a misplaced river, but all you need is courage and 1 yuan – about 10 pence – in your hand to catch a bus from the central Gongbei station, which will drop you by the door.
Perched on the western lip of the Pearl River Delta, Zhuhai is a young city, literally on the rise – tower blocks and motorways under construction everywhere you look, turbocharged by a uniquely Chinese form of hypercapitalised Communism. ‘When I first came here, it was all grass,’ said Paul Roczek to me over breakfast in the hotel next to the theatre. Artistic director of the competition’s violin category, Roczek is also a professor at the Mozarteum University Salzburg. Five years ago the competition was set up by his former pupil Yao Lu after an abortive attempt to link the Austrian university with the China Conservatory of Music in Beijing. The first edition took place in 2015.