Maestro weaved his magic to convey spirit of novel

So when he was told he had been selected to write the score for the TV series he was thrilled, he says.

He told Wang Fulin that he wanted to compose the music independently because "the emotion needed to be cohesive and private", Wang Liping says. He also went out of his way not to read the script because he wanted to envision his own version of the story.

"Unlike other elements of the TV series such as costumes, scripts and settings that can be sourced from the novel, music didn't exist at all," Wang Liping says of the challenges he faced. "I just read the novel over and over again, and I came up with the tempo that the writer Cao Xueqin set."

It took him four and a half years to finish the 13 original music pieces for the TV adaptation of Dream of the Red Chamber.

When the 36-episode series premiered in 1987 on Central Television, all the musical pieces, including Wang Ning Mei and Zang Hua Yin, became instantly popular.

Starsing Music Group, a record company in Guangzhou, recently released a vinyl version of the soundtrack of the TV series as part of its Vinyl Revival project, which aims to promote a comeback of vinyl.

Wang Liping says he suffered many a sleepless night and managed to portray the characters with his music every single day.