Angel Lam's Family Affair

As Saturday’s standing ovation petered out, the intermission crush began: Crowds of well-wishers poured backstage and crammed into an elevator alongside Wednesday night’s marimba. Several floors above, they lined the hallway where composer Angel Lam waited alongside her piece’s soloist, Yo-Yo Ma.

Lam’s mother, dressed in a traditional Chinese outfit like her daughter, scanned the bustling crowd with a look of calm content. Strongly represented in the mob was that most ancient of Chinese ideas: the family clan, or jiāzú. “Oh, we have aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters—probably about 15 or 20 people total, coming in from California and Hong Kong.” And those were just the blood relatives. Composer-comrades like Huang Ruo, Bright Sheng, and Chen Qigang lined the halls, as did a diverse cast of characters ranging from singer Shen Yang to a smiling Steve Orlins, President of the National Committee on United States–China Relations.

Eventually the stampede subsided and ushers shooed the fans back to their seats, but not before Lam and Ma had had their fill of congratulations. They smiled into the final camera flashes as the intermission-ending bells sounded throughout the Hall.

Posted by Nick Frisch, 2009–2010 Fulbright Fellow researching classical music developments in China

11/9 New Juilliard Ensemble @ Alice Tully Hall

For my money, the mid-size chamber ensemble is the best and most versatile platform for exhibiting works by modern Chinese composers. It’s large enough to accommodate a healthy roster of Western and Chinese instruments, with lots of places to go in terms of color and volume. But still small enough to keep things loose and improvisatory in the style of traditional Chinese music, most of which had no notation and was played on instruments that are essentially folk handicrafts.

Last night’s Alice Tully show by the New Juilliard Ensemble exhibited six works by six modern Chinese composers: five of mid-1950s vintage, and one born in 1988. The latter was Li Shaosheng, whose Skyline on the Moon was a world premiere composed especially for the ensemble; the rest were well-established composers representing Beijing, Shanghai, and China’s interior. All the pieces shared in common a chamber-orchestra format, and a rough similarity in style that ranged between a carefree Bartók, a distracted Stravinsky, Copland-Bernstein, and a little rock n’ roll. But the diversity within these broad parameters was impressive and seductive—like, at the risk of veering into cliché, China herself. In Guo Wenjing’s Concertino, the solo cello was the star; in Zhu Jian’er’s symphony, the extremely versatile dizi flute. Rumbles from the bass drum opened and closed young Li’s well-received and highly scenic piece, while his teacher Ye Xiaogang used strings and angular rhythms to do justice to the title of his Nine Horses. The rock- and writing-inclined Liu Sola offered one of her rare returns to classical music with In-Corporeal I (pop beats, drumset, and all), and Jia Daqun’s densely colorful Three Images from Ink and Wash Painting tried with good success to adapt to music styles of Chinese calligraphy.

The program’s strongly visual theme didn’t go amiss, either: In a time when much of modern music can feel aggressively antisocial and abstract, sometimes it’s nice to sit back with fellow concertgoers and take in the views.

Posted by Nick Frisch, 2009–2010 Fulbright Fellow researching classical music developments in China

Ancient Dance, Modern Anthem

Fashionably dressed in a black velvet jacket, Li Shaosheng did not look out of place beneath Joyce Theater’s shining marquee last night. In town for tonight’s premiere of his latest piece, he was taking some time off from rehearsal to see another, older side of the Carnegie Festival.

On the stage inside, the Taiwanese Han Tang Yuefu Music and Dance Ensemble enacted two hours of historically-inflected dances and sung drama based around the styles of the Han and Tang dynasties. The music and dancers repeated patterns, subtly changing each time. Li, who studies composition at Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music, seemed to appreciate the performance despite his extenuating circumstances: jet-lag, and a daylong rehearsal for his big premiere. “It’s quite traditional,” said a visibly fatigued Li. Many modern composition students on the mainland today don’t get an in-depth education in traditional musical styles; “we all know that Taiwan has preserved its culture very well,” added Li. Everything was restrained, subtle, with nuances brought out through endless repetitions with slight differences.

Li’s piece tonight will be different: “It’s an anthem, about 15 minutes,” he explained on the 1 train back up to Juilliard, where he’s staying in the dorms. “They commissioned it in February, and I wrote it in August”—not quite as long and storied as the two-millennia history behind the nanguan music he had just seen, but something to think about when you see the New Juilliard Ensemble show tonight.

Posted by Nick Frisch, 2009–2010 Fulbright Fellow researching classical music developments in China

11/6 The Evolving Cultural Identity of Chinese American Artists @ Museum of Chinese in America

Even today, said the panelists, “Do you speak English?” is a question sometimes directed at Americans who appear phenotypically Asian. But not last night: With a loquacious and erudite command of English that outstripped their Chinese, three accomplished Chinese Americans tackled the thorny issue of identity.

Even émigré Bright Sheng, born and raised in China, confessed: “After so long in America, I found my Chinese was slipping and English getting better. For a time, I couldn’t speak either language well.” Playwright David Henry Hwang and writer Jeff Yang, both American-born, seemed to relish their American-ness. “For so long, we were trying to prove that we were more American than Chinese,” said Yang. Hwang chimed in: “but now that China is rising, we want to identify more with that.”

The setting couldn’t have been more fitting for this wide-ranging discussion of Chinese American identity: the brand-new Centre Street. home of the Museum of Chinese in America. Facing a diverse crowd, the three mused on how much things have changed. “In the schoolyard, “Chinese’ used to be a bad thing,” recalled Yang. “‘Chinese American’ wasn’t a well-developed idea.” “But now, they are studying us in college courses!” said Hwang with more than a hint of amazement. “In the past 30 years,” he continued, “the changes have been huge. Who could have imagined that a Chinese American writer [Amy Tan] would be a household name?”

Audience questions focused on the notion of Asian versus Chinese American, the possibility of future rivalry with China, and the topic—still taboo in conservative strains of Chinese culture—of mental disability. One gentleman whose look and manner put him one “fugghedaboudit” away from a Chinese Tony Soprano, said what many were thinking: “Talk to me over the phone, you’d never know I looked Chinese.”

Posted by Nick Frisch, 2009–2010 Fulbright Fellow researching classical music developments in China

11/5 Traditional Chinese Music in the 21st Century @ China Institute

Cultural agnosticism was the watchword of the evening as Huang Ruo and Min Xiao-Fen faced a full room at China Institute last night. Fresh off Tuesday’s CD release party at (Le) Poisson Rouge, they explained through words and music how culture in China—a country where tradition weighs more heavily than in most places in the world—adapts to the 21st century in the hands of younger artists. Composer Huang spoke and sang, and explained how he learned much about the diversity within China before going abroad and learning about the world outside. “At Oberlin, I could take music, but also philosophy, computer science; it was great.” Pipa virtuoso Min, who spoke during the conversation’s second half, was no less engaged: She grew up during the Cultural Revolution, when political and cultural orthodoxy was a matter of life and death. The crowd hung on every word as she retold her journey from there to her present-day role as the world’s premiere pipa-jazz crossover artist. Besides Huang’s singing, the audience was treated to audio recordings, Four Fragments for Solo Violin (played by Judy Tang from Huang's FIRE ensemble), and Min’s memorable mash-up of Ellington’s “Satin Doll” and the classic “Night Shanghai.” The finale: Written on the Wind, Huang’s piece for pipa accompanied by a calligraphy-inflected abstract art video. Min sang, but in no recognizable words: “I don’t know German or French,” said Huang, “and I kept going to the opera and relying on the surtitles. Then, I just turned off the surtitles, and tried to guess what the meaning was from the context, the emotion. My guesses were pretty good! So for this piece, I made up a language.” For those of us often left straining to understand the meaning in cross-cultural contexts, a nonsense tongue was the ultimate equalizer.
Posted by Nick Frisch, 2009–2010 Fulbright Fellow researching classical music developments in China

11/4 Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra

The gentleman standing in the refreshments line at intermission, pontificating loudly à la “Annie Hall," may stand corrected. The Stravinsky was not a richly compelling and daringly visionary break from the composer's canon that is unlike any other Stravinsky piece you've ever heard. In fact, the material in Chant du rossignol predates his most famous works. Moreover, clearly audible within is an early sketchpad for many of his later ballets, notwithstanding the shine and dazzle of unusual, "Oriental"-sounding tonalities.

What was somewhat novel was the juxtaposition: sandwiching two modern Chinese pieces between two works of chinoiserie. Chant du rossignol and Bartók's Miraculous Mandarin Suite both hail from an era when the West's limited understanding of Chinese music came through interpretation by Western masters. Even those composers who made some use of actual Chinese tunes and scales—like the famous Turandot theme based on the traditional "Jasmine Flower" melody—still ended up with Chinese caricatures embedded in often-great works of music.

How things have changed: Last night's other pieces were from Chinese masters, stars from China's first generation of modern composers to have ample life experience at home and in the West. Both pieces set an unusual solo instrument against rich orchestral textures, and both had tersely poetic Chinese names belied by their English titles: Bright Sheng's Colors of Crimson condenses down to the color-word Jiàng, while the grand-sounding Water Concerto, by Tan Dun, is two syllables, Shuĭyuè, "water music." The solos, both performed by Colin Currie, were likewise pure and simple but deeply felt. For Tan's piece twanging, splashing, bubbling water; for Sheng's, a marimba that floated over the orchestra parts.

Bright Sheng and Tan Dun looked on from the audience as David Robertson conducted the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. Each approached the stage for bows after their pieces, and each was intercepted by a beaming Robertson who dashed down to administer hugs before they could even get up the parquet stairs. It was just as well that Bartók and Stravinsky couldn't make it last night; the old masters were good, but their Chinese counterparts stole the show.

View a slide show from the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra performance at Carnegie Hall on November 4, 2009.

Posted by Nick Frisch, 2009–2010 Fulbright Fellow researching classical music developments in China

11/2 Neighborhood Concert: Haochen Zhang @ Flushing Town Hall

Stumbling off a flight from Hong Kong, your correspondent was hoping to make a discreet entrance to the Flushing Town Hall for Haochen Zhang's recital. No such luck: the flight may have been early, but this conspicuously non-Chinese, luggage-schlepping blogger still faced a huge, bemused crowd on arrival. Lined up all the way down the hall and around the corner, the overwhelmingly Chinese turnout had waited for an hour already and would wait an hour more.

Their enthusiasm spilled into Zhang's performance of 24 Chopin Preludes, Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit, and Liszt's Rhapsodie espagnole. In this Chinese immigrant enclave, the packed hall lent the show more of a Peking Opera feel (chatting, kids running up the aisles, occasional cell phone bleeps, overzealous clapping) than there was at Zhang's performance in the Chinese capital two weeks ago. During the Chopin, Zhang almost had to fight off the applause during each pause, keeping his hands dramatically raised to signal that no, the piece was not over yet, before launching into the subsequent prelude. As a symbol of young, spectacular success, they loved him; by the second half, everyone had settled down to really listen to the music, too.

Maybe it wasn't just the venue's location; the recent injury of Taiwanese pitcher-hero Chien-Ming Wang has kept him off the Yankees' lineup and thus out of the World Series, making decisions on the evening's entertainment that much easier for locals. Whatever the reason, non–East Asians were barely in evidence. English-language announcements from Carnegie staff were translated into Mandarin and Cantonese, and one got the feeling that many in the crowd were recent transplants grateful for the interpreter. But no English—or Chinese, or any other language—was needed to appreciate Zhang's performance, which by the end had a restless crowd fully at attention.

Posted by Nick Frisch, 2009–2010 Fulbright Fellow researching classical music developments in China

Postcard from Guangzhou: Pearl River Piano Factory

Sawing, hammering, screaming wheels, and groaning elevators are all par for the course inside any of Guangdong province's thousands of factories. Plinking notes are less common: found only in the Pearl River Piano factory's tuning rooms, where upright pianos get five tunings and grand pianos no less than seven.

Visiting on Friday, I saw imported equipment from Korea, Japan, and Europe, manned by the industrious workers that have made this region famous as the world's factory floor. Some pianos bore the names of well-known European firms founded a century or more before Pearl River itself, with no trace of their Chinese provenance. Elsewhere the brand name was proudly featured: both Lang Lang and Yundi Li have made pilgrimages here, leaving behind signed photos of themselves playing on the signature product. Today, Pearl River makes one out of every four Chinese pianos, and lines of strings and woodwinds to boot.

For many middle-class families today, the piano is the next logical purchase after the refrigerator, washer, and car. Music lessons, which can add points on the notoriously daunting gaokao (nationwide college exam), are never far behind. Pianos are the only Western instrument produced for mainly domestic consumption. In 2008, China exported 88% of its (Western) string instruments, and only 21% of its pianos. Between the vast talent pool, the boom in piano production, and the celebrity of Lang Lang and his peers, a piano golden age might not be too far away.

View photos of a Pearl River Piano outlet in the far-flung city of Sanming, Fujian Province; a Pearl River Piano factory; and a Pearl River factory dedicated to the wood components of its pianos.

Posted by Nick Frisch, 2009–2010 Fulbright Fellow researching classical music developments in China

Statistics courtesy of the China Musical Instrument Association.

Did You Ever Wonder about the Piano in China?

China's relationship with the piano has always been more complicated than with other non-indigenous instruments. First, there was the size: In a country where instruments have historically been folk handicrafts, anything requiring a factory full of heavy machinery was bound to get off to a shaky start. Even after the piano became a well-known icon of Western music, its journey in China was more peculiar than in South Korea or Japan. In between colonial-era curiosity and middle-class affectation, the instrument was an unlikely but highly popular symbol of new proletarian music. Like the train, the steel mill, the tank, and the fighter jet, it was seen as a modern, mechanized tool for social advancement that could be turned to the service of the Revolution.

China's largest piano manufacturer, Pearl River Piano, was founded as a state-owned venture in 1956, amid China's bid to build its industrial capacity. These were heady days for pianos: The year before, Fou Ts'ong had taken home a prize from the International Chopin Piano Competition that made him a national celebrity. But for decades, the factory struggled to become more than a shoddy workshop. Even as a pianist like Yin Chengzong became a Cultural Revolution–era superstar with his renditions of Maoist music, the factory languished. Then came the 1980s, when China got serious about manufacturing and opened the Pearl River Delta region to foreign investment. Not to be outdone, China's flagship state-owned piano firm rushed to modernize.

Posted by Nick Frisch, 2009–2010 Fulbright Fellow researching classical music developments in China

Postcard from Beijing: A Triumphant Return

Chinese culture puts a lot of stock in prizes and competitions; whatever the circumstances, the title matters a lot. So it was no great surprise that the youngest and first-ever Chinese winner of the Van Cliburn International Piano competition had a full-evening program at the Beijing Music Festival on Monday night. Rather, it was the audience that provided the surprise; in a country where raucous Peking Opera performances usually beget loud, running commentary from the floor, I have never seen a Beijing audience so completely rapt. Perhaps it was national pride, or maybe audiences here have finally internalized the solemn rituals of Western classical music. Or maybe they were just in awe. Whatever the reason, they remained fixated on a single figure hunched over his piano as if ready to pounce. Even the children were silent and wide-eyed. Only once did I see a woman pull out a cell phone, and she just placed it quietly on her armrest as the gadget’s voice recorder clicked away the seconds of Haochen Zhang’s performance.

Among the ranks of China’s celebrity piano prodigies, Zhang’s homecoming puts him firmly alongside Yundi Li and a whole roster of Van Cliburn finalists. If their experience is anything to go by, November 2 won't be the last New York sees of Zhang.

Posted by Nick Frisch, 2009–2010 Fulbright Fellow researching classical music developments in China