Chinese pianist with ties to Paris, launches national tour

When he was 15 years old, Wu Muye studied playing the piano at Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris, the music school of the Paris Conservatory, from where he graduated in 2009.

The pianist says the city brought him closer to the music of some of his favorite composers, Frederick Chopin, Claude Debussy and Franz Liszt, all of whom lived in the French capital at some point in their lives.

Chopin arrived in Paris in 1831 and never returned to his homeland, Poland. In Paris, he forged a friendship with the Hungarian composer Liszt. The French composer Debussy frequently played Chopin's music during his studies at the Paris Conservatory, he says.