ROBERT TURNBULL INVESTIGATES CHINA’S DEVELOPING LOVE AFFAIR with CLASSICAL PIANO-PLAYING

WHEN THEN-18-YEAR-OLD Yundi Li won the XIV Frederic Chopin Competition held in Warsaw in 2000, followed in fourthplace by his compatriot Chen Sa, it marked one of the defining moments of China’s inauguration in the formerly Western field of classical piano. Heading the charge alongside Li was Lang Lang, a fellow Chinese native of the same age who had made a similarly glossy arrival onto the international scene, starring with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1999 as a last-minute replacement.

PIANO CITY

Seven years on, and the classical landscape is still being transformed. Li’s second album Yundi Li C Chopin/Liszt Pizano Concerto No 1 was released by Universal Music at the end of 2006 and the Schezuan-born heartthrob also advertises for Adidas and Coca Cola. Lang Lang continues to cut a swathe around the world with his vivacious style bothon stage and off, as well as in his role as UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. As bothartists continue to impress audiences and critics alike, China is focusing its attentions on fostering the next prodigy, and it’s not taking the challenge lightly. About 10 to 15 million people in China have taken to the piano with painstaking fanaticism; Shenzhen recently declared itself a “piano city”; and Guangzhou proved its classical credentials with a grand opera concert to commemorate Mozart’s 250thbirthday in November last year.

SHATTERING PRECONCEPTIONS

Despite a few exceptions such as Fou Ts’Ong – one of China’s first critically acclaimed concert pianists who had defected from Communist China in 1959 – a long-held prejudice in European musical circles maintains that although Asian pianists demonstrate dazzling technique at a very young age, they are a bit short on depthor individuality as interpreters of the classics such as Bach or Bartok. this is largely attributed to the fashion of learning. Just as much of Chinese performance culture – Beijing Opera, for instance – is handed down orally, so Western classical music is assimilated “parrot fashion”. Students slavishly follow the latest recordings of Horowitz or Pollini, and try to break records in speed and technical accuracy, but with out the grounding of theoretical knowledge. Many can scarcely tell the difference between a rondo and a fugue. However, one of the world’s most respected conductors, Edo de Waart, currently artistic director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, has experienced an interesting phenomenon first-hand. Before moving to Asia in 2004, he thought that to build a world-class classical orchestra, “you need to have players who have tasted and smelled Salzburg, Paris, London and Amsterdam. When you go to Tuscany, it’s easy to do a piece by Puccini because you can conjure up that little terrace or that little restaurant.” But in the course of auditioning for new talent, he discovered: “If I had a blindfold on, I won’t be able to say ‘this person is from Austria or America or wherever. It’s proof that music is a universal language.” And Chinese are driving home the point. De Waarts’s forthcoming concert in June, Mozart in the City, stars Chen Sa, a pianist from Shenzhen who studied at the British Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Fou Ts’Ong listed her as one of China’s top three pianists, alongside Lang and Li, saying, “I will be happy if they do better than me.”

A TALENTED TRIO

these three young Chinese-born musicians have received international recognition for their talent. Visit their websites for more information.

1. Yundi Li

Yundi Li was born in 1982 in Chongqing in central China and started taking piano lessons when he was seven years old. By 18, he had won the first prize at the XIV Frederic Chopin Competition held in Warsaw in October 2000. He has since toured the world and released a number of albums with Deutsche Grammophon, including his latest – a recording of Liszt’s and Chopin’s First Piano Concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Sir Andrew Davis. www.yundili.homestead.com

2. Lang Lang

Born in Shenyang in 1982, Lang Lang began his piano studies at the age of three at the Shenyang Conservatory of Music before going on to the Central Music Conservatory in Beijing. Since a sell-out Carnegie Hall debut in April 2001, Lang Lang has impressed audiences around the world with his performances and is also contracted to Deutsche Grammophon. Albums include the Billboard Classical Charts number one Memory in 2006 and the recently-released Dragon Songs – the soundtrack to the full-lengthdocumentary created during his extensive China concert tour. www.langlang.com

3. Chen Sa

Born in 1979, Sa Chen had started her musical studies at the Sichuan Conservatory of Music, followed by the Shenzhen School of Arts, working with Dan Zhaoyi in bothplaces. Following further studies in England and Germany, Chen Sa has won a number of prestigious awards, including the crystal prize at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Texas, and performed recitals with the world’s finest orchestras. She is due to play at the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra (www.hkpo.com) in June. www.chen-sa.com

EMBRACING EDUCATION

Anyone doubting the ascendancy of the Chinese should look at the figures. While Britain’s lamentable standard of education leaves most 11-year-olds unlikely ever to have heard a note of Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata, of China’s new pianists in training, “even if only one percent turn out to be prodigies, the Chinese are bound to dominate future generations of pianists,” says Chen Hung Kwan, a professor at Beijing’s Conservatory. The rise of private piano schools for children as young as five has focused many middle-class parental ambitions. the most talented Chinese start at three or four years old, can play Chopin studies by age 10, and have mastered at least five of the 20 or so warhorse concertos by age 15 or 16. Quite apart from the nine major conservatories currently frenziedly building to keep up with the demand of those aspiring professionals, there are about 600 private piano centres throughout China and dozens of privately sponsored competitions. those who are unable to reach top schools focus on exams. Shanghai’s schools have 40,000 students aged five and above sitting for piano tests every year. In Hong Kong, the number of kids taking the British Associated Board exams is an astonishing 100,000.

REVERSING THE DAMAGE

When one considers that all forms of Western music were banned a generation ago, this is even more remarkable. During the Cultural Revolution, eminent pianists were denounced or sent into the countryside for re-education. For 10 years, the only piece anyone was allowed to play was the Yellow River Concerto, commissioned by Madame Mao to replace the popular pre-revolutionary Yellow River Cantata. According to the Shanghai-born piano professor Li Mingqiang, “anyone attempting this work would be subjected to painful scrutiny. Any deviation was considered heretical.” It was only in 1976 with Zhou Guangren’s famous Beijing Conservatory recital that the lid was eventually lift ed on Mozart, Schubert and the rest of the classics. According to Zhou, currently a doyenne of Beijing’s cultural life, many took advantage of the thaw to study abroad. In NorthAmerica especially, Chinese pianists developed a sizeable presence at top academies and started making waves by winning competitions. those who stayed behind, many former pupils of Russian and Jewish émigrés in Beijing and Shanghai, led the next generation of pianists.

AN ATTITUDE OF EXCELLENCE

But the aim in China is probably not about copying or even competing with the West as much as producing a prodigy of demonstrable excellence. China’s new moneyed classes will go to considerable lengths to ensure the only child the state permits has a chance to attain his level. Only the best teachers will do. As in the case of Lang Lang, fathers give up major careers to move to areas where master piano professors reside and mothers spend 10 hours a day supervising their children as they commandeer Mozart concertos by the age of eight and Rachmaninoff by 12. the next stage, the competition, is oft en subsidised by parents. In Vancouver last year, Chinese made up 95 per cent of contestants at a piano competition, and at most of the top international events, they average 30 per cent of finalists. Endless rounds of competitions offer opportunities for aspiring virtuosi to pick up well-earned cash and media coverage, and – if lucky – an agent with global clout. It is a highly competitive business and, in China where every income counts, Chinese psychologists take the view that children are best involved in something as gratifying and educational as the piano.

SHENZHEN CONCERT HALL

Shenzhen’s new state-of-the-art RMB1.6 billion Concert Hall is designed by Japanese architect Arata Isozaki and covers an area of 26,345sq m. Isozaki employs traditional Chinese concepts of wuxing (the five elements) by using five different colours: yellow, red, blue, white and black. there are two performing halls: the 1,800-seat Symphony Hall with stage technology from Hong Kong and a smaller theatre Studio, which is a salle modulable with between 400 and 580 seats. the hall also includes rehearsal rooms, training studios and recording facilities. General Manager Wang Lei is hoping that he can entice Shenzhen’s population of 12 million to the theatre with a mixed programme of Western classical music, chamber groups, Chinese folk art, dance and “singing programmes”. Lei plans between 100 and 150 concerts a year, featuring one celebrated world orchestra and 20 concerts from the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra, which was founded in 1982 with the help of the municipal government. Fuzhong No 1 Road, Futian District, Shenzhen, tel/fax +86 (755) 8306-0346, www.shenzhenconcerthall.com

THE PIANO CITY

Shenzhen has truly developed what can only be described as an infatuation with the instrument. As the recently declared “piano city”, it’s just inaugurated China’s first ever Piano Concerto Competition with a top prize of $30,000 and concert engagements with the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra. Deng Xiaoping’s Special Economic Zone – where only selected Chinese are allowed to live – now boasts the largest number of millionaires per capita in all China. And eight per cent of its 12 million population are US-dollar millionaires. However, while focusing on becoming a capital for commerce, Shenzhen has acquired a reputation as a desert for culture, which current mayor Xu Zongheng is keen to change. Vying with Shanghai for cultural and economic supremacy, Shenzhen is about to open a state-of-the-art, Japanese-designed concert hall. Behind this move is the man responsible for bothYundi Li and Chen Sa: the great piano pedagogue, Dan Zhaoyi. He moved to Shenzhen from Chengdu in 1995 and launched the new competition to showcase local as well as international talent. BothBeijing and Shanghai have excellent conservatories as well as piano competitions, but Shenzhen’s Piano Concerto Competition is the first to create an event that specifically tests the highly demanding skills of concerto-playing. “these are challenges for every pianist,” says Jeffrey Zhang, one of the event organisers, who acknowledges the event also shows off the skills of the local Symphony Orchestra. At the first competition, held in October last year, Mainland Chinese represented the bare majority, joined by Korean, Taiwanese, a few Europeans and a handful from Russia and the Ukraine. While the mood was informal, the technical level was anything but relaxed. Required to present two solo piano etudes as well as one of four Mozart Concertos in the first round, most contestants launch into their choices, with the clear intentions of showing off their technical prowess. Most were teenagers.

THRILL OF THE COMPETITION

Attending a competition can be like hearing the “piano Olympics”. When launching into Chopin and Liszt studies, most contestants opt for breakneck speeds, while the heft y concertos are tackled rather as an athlete would a triathlon, one obstacle aft er another. It’s thrilling to hear how students manage the octave section of a Rachmaninoff Concerto or the left -hand trills of a passage in Ravel. If you can read music, it would be a great idea to bring a score. Presentation varies immensely. A Chinese boy studying in Germany looks stiff at the piano, but plays with all the required stamina and musicianship. the Shanghai Conservatory student has clearly done his homework. Before a note could be heard, he carefully adjusted his seats three times, mopped his brow affectingly before adjusting his seat one more time, only then to lapse into a moment’s meditation before touching the keys. A performance before a performance. But there are heart-stopping moments. Aft er a smattering of wrong notes or a memory slip, a student might regain his or her stride – or lose it altogether. You are on the edge of your seat. For the second round, the big warhorse concertos are brought out, but the Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Brahms and Liszt concertos are works the judges know by heart. the judges, all experienced performers as well as jurors, are looking for individuality and personality. “Speed is not a virtue per se, but a pianist who manages to create real atmosphere will get my vote,” says one. “In China, where skills are so oft en handed down, we are looking for a special understanding of the mysteries of the score.” Only on hearing the pianists back to back do you realise what those mysteries are. the competition proceeds with inevitable moments of ennuie: indifferent interpretations of the same Mozart concerto. But then, someone steps onstage and transfixes the audience with a musicality and elegance of touch that brings a composer to life. that’s what it’s all about, in any nationality.

DIARY DATES

4thChina International Piano Competition (Xiamen), 15-25 October 2007 Organised by the Ministry of Culture of the People’s Republic of China, this competition is the largest of the year and open to pianists of all nationalities between the ages of 17 to 32. email offi ce@cipc.cc, www.cipc.cc 2nd Hong Kong International Piano Competition, 3-21 September 2008 the Chopin Society of Hong Kong is a well-established institution in Hong Kong, which inaugurated the Hong Kong International Piano Competition in 2005, with a second event planned for next year. www.chopinsocietyhk.com 2nd China Shenzhen International Piano Concerto Competition, 2008/9 (date to be confirmed) All set to be even bigger and better than the debut event created by Dan Zhaoyi, as China’s first and only piano concerto competition to test skills in piano concerto repertory as well as solo works. email info@csipcc.com, www.csipcc.com

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