Her skilled violin playing caught attention of the director of the Royal College of Music, who hailed Vanessa-Mae as a "true child prodigy, like Mozart and Mendelssohn." This wonder kid began performing early in her career, and she appeared with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the age of ten. By the time she was thirteen, Vanessa-Mae had already released three classical CDs, had gone on an international tour with the London Mozart Players, and had been on TV many times.
In 1995, when Vanessa was just sixteen, she came strongly onto the music scene with her highly successful pop CD called The Violin Player. The elite of the classical music world were shocked that their prodigy had released a "pop" CD packaged as "classical." But the world soon fell in love with Vanessa and her style of music, which blended traditional and modern electric violin sounds. The Violin Player sold 3 million copies, and was in the Top 20 in twenty-five countries.
In 1997, Hong Kong honored Vanessa by inviting her to perform there at the ceremony to mark its transfer to Chinese control, the only non-Chinese performer on stage that night. In the same year, she won the World Music Award as the best-selling classical artist. Vanessa-Mae has even shared the stage with rock star Annie Lennox, proving her ability to blend rock into her music, and she was able to boost her recognition in the United States by performing at a World Series Playoff at Wrigley Field in Chicago.
Vanessa-Mae has mesmerized audiences the world over with her compositions and charismatic personality. The accomplished young musician has created a new style of music mixing classic instrumentals with contemporary beats to become a "techno-acoustic fusion violinist." At the skilled hands of Vanessa-Mae, the violin has achieved a pop status, and her playing has attracted fans as young as ten or eleven. Not only is she talented, but before the age of twenty, she had already released fifteen albums. Her taste for music is also very broad. As a teenager, she would listen to Beethoven and the Beatles, Mozart and Michael Jackson, Paganini and Prince. She liked them all. And all of them influenced her music.