Storm over Baalbek

Electric Vanessa-Mae is coming.

May Farah feels the buzz

Vanessa-Mae says her music reflects her personality: "There are times when I feel really funky, cultural-cool, laid back and retro; and times when I feel futuristic, modern, aggressive, and flamboyant. Like a storm."

The mix of classical, funk and more than a little bit of rock'n'roll has made the violinist, soon to be 20, one of the hottest properties in music today.

On Saturday night, Vanessa-Mae's Storm On world tour lands in Lebanon to open this year's Baalbek Festival. The first classical violinist ever to make it onto the Billboard Music Charts clearly has an enthusiastic following in Lebanon with Saturday's 4,000 seats already sold out. Organizers have now added a second performance, Sunday evening, and tickets for that show are going quickly as well.

"It's powerful, natural. You're frightened and hide from it," Vanessa-Mae has said about "Storm" ­ both the atmospheric condition which inspired the title of her most popular CD to date and its accompanying tour. "If not, then you'll enjoy it, like me."

Vanessa-Mae Vanakorn Nicholson was born on Oct. 27, 1979, in Singapore to a Thai mother and a Chinese father. Now a British citizen, Vanessa-Mae moved to England when she was four years old.

Her career as a musician had already been launched a year earlier. However, the first instrument she was introduced to was not the violin but the rather bigger and more cumbersome piano.

In a recent televised interview, Vanessa-Mae said it was size that led her toward another instrument.

"When I was a little girl I thought about pianos, big pianos, and how you have to use other people's at concert halls and recital halls when you go and play at different venues. But with the violin, you can buy your own special one and keep it with you all the time and it's so intimate, you just put it under your chin and it's like your baby!"

Vanessa-Mae had her first violin lesson on her fifth birthday but it was several years, she acknowledged, before the possibility of a career emerged.

"I didn't really think that I was going to take the violin or music up as a career until I was 8. Most members of my family play an instrument, either the violin, the viola, or the piano," she said, flashing her trademark smile.

"My mother is a professional concert pianist and she regularly accompanies me on the piano when we have a recital. Occasionally when she is free and I'm free we both rehearse together for fun."

By the time she was 10, Vanessa-Mae was already an accomplished violinist. That year, after having trained as the youngest student with Professor Lin Yao Ji of the Central Conservatory of China in Beijing and with Professor Felix Andrievsky of the Royal College of Music in London, she made her concert debut in London with the Philharmonia Orchestra.

By the age of 12 she had toured internationally as a concerto soloist and recitalist and released two classical recordings, establishing her as the youngest musician ever to record the Tchaikovsky and Beethoven violin concertos, and the label "true child prodigy" stuck.

Vanessa-Mae, however, is philosophical: "Nobody is born a genius, so I'm happy that since I was little my hard work and my devotion to music has paid off."

With a number of world tours already undertaken, Vanessa-Mae admits she has come a long way. "The first recordings and concerts I made were very nerve-wracking. Nowadays I don't really get so nervous that my knees tremble, but I still try to get excited. It's good to be excited because you get your adrenaline pumping. It's not good to be flabby before a concert or a recording because then people feel that you're not excited to play to them."

It's that excitement which has set her apart from many other performers. As Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, said of Vanessa-Mae after a concert in New York in 1998: "When she plays, we can feel that she loves it."

Vanessa-Mae's world tours have been triumphant and outstanding because she is more than a musician; she is a dazzling performer, and a unique one at that, as she straddles both classical and rock music with equal genius and authority. And having been named one of People Magazine's 50 most beautiful people in the world last year hasn't hurt either.

That beauty, virtuosity and power come to Baalbek's Temple of Jupiter for two performances, which will include rock selections, including I Feel Love, Hocus Pocus and Storm, and classical pieces from Bach, Vivaldi and Puccini.