Beijing Symphony Orchestra performs under the baton of conductor Li Biao in a concert on July 31 at the Forbidden City Concert Hall. It was the first concert opening to the public in the capital after the pandemic hit early this year with a limiting capacity to 30 percent. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Li says: "Beethoven's music works stand tall at the center of musical history. His music keeps on inspiring and challenging musicians of different generations. Today we celebrate not only the great composer but also the humanity and emotion embedded in his harmonic impulses."

Li, born in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, started out as a xylophone player when he was 5. When he was 12 his talent and sense of rhythm convinced his teachers and parents to send him to the middle school affiliated to the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. In 1988 he became the first Chinese student of percussion instruments to study abroad on a government scholarship. He spent seven years at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, and when he graduated entered a music competition in Hungary, but by then he had already exhausted his funds.

So, he sought an advance on his scholarship and left for that country. Li won the competition's silver award and $10,000 in cash. The competition also led him to win a three-year fellowship to the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich.

Li immersed himself in Europe's rich musical history and culture, learning Western classical percussion instruments and modern music with jazz musicians and symphony orchestras.

In 2003 he became a member of the faculty of Hanns Eisler College or Academy of Music in Berlin, and two years later returned to Beijing to establish a percussion department at the Central Conservatory of Music and launched his band.

When he was in Germany he visited Bonn, where Beethoven had first displayed his prodigious talent, he says.

"I tried to capture something that could help me better understand Beethoven. He was a man who created such wonderful music when he could barely hear. He approved of making the best of that situation."

As bad situations go, the Forbidden City Concert Hall general manager Xu sees the 250th birthday celebrations as somewhat of a godsend.

"If there is one good thing that has come of this pandemic it's that people are desperately longing to hear Beethoven performed live again. It is as though many only now fully appreciate just how much of a gift his music is."