Coals to Newcastle.

On Sunday night at the Proms on BBC Four we had the China Philharmonic Orchestra playing at the Royal Albert Hall Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance - how about that for 'Coals to Newcastle'? Over the lat 30 years the Chinese have developed their own style of playing the international classical repertoire from an almost standing start. There are now some 50 million citizens learning to play the piano - the population of England all playing one particular instrument. They produce on average one new piano every few minutes. That is a staggering number learning and can only bode well for the very successful prodigy and there was one playing with the orchestra that night a 24 year old Haochen Zhang. In an interview with Katie Derham he said that because of the Chinese 'one child policy' many parents had poured all their ambitions into this one child placing great emphasis on being very successful in the wider world. So we can look forward to seeing many more talented musicians from China in the concerts halls across the globe over the next few years.