"Plonked on top of the modest piano in the lounge of Vanessa-Mae’s Swiss alpine apartment in Zermatt sits a somewhat battered ski helmet. “How hilarious is that?” she giggles. “But in a way it’s the perfect symbolism for my twin loves. Music, my life-long passion, and skiing, my life-long hobby.”It’s no surprise, really, that her skiing garb – its dents and scratches testimony to how seriously she takes the sport – should sit on top of her beloved piano. (And it is perhaps a subtle, subconscious suggestion that music is taking something of a back seat these days: “There has been a marked slowing down in my life.”) No surprise since the sudden, albeit brief, announcement last week that Vanessa-Mae Vanakorn Nicholson – the Singapore-born violin virtuoso and child prodigy who matured into the sultry siren who sexed up the staid world of classical music – is hoping to represent Thailand as a downhill skier at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia."
What a weird turn (even for a teenage prodigy) and a revealing portrait. I had no idea what Vanessa Mae's story was, despite owning a couple of her recordings. The mother sounds like a real monster. Worse than any run-of-the-mill stage mother--with the exception, perhaps, of Dina Lohan.
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