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EYE ON EUROPE |
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THE CHINESE ARE COMING!
Chinese pianists are selling CD's in enormous numbers. Among the hot new Chinese classical artists are Lang Lang (left above) and Yundi Li. |
How the Chinese are
outshining our musicians
By MICHAEL JOHNSON
of TheColumnists.com
I was in my Beijing hotel room, minding my own business, a few years ago when I heard a Chopin Etude--Opus 25, No. 10, I think it was--booming out from the lounge downstairs. Upon investigation I discovered a young Chinese man dressed in a tux hammering vigorously at a grand piano over in a corner. Against the clink and chatter of the hotel guests, this made for a surreal glimpse of modern China in transition.
The pianist was running rather mechanically through his music school repertoire, which obviously did not include “Melancholy Baby.” In fact, I think we got his entire final exam recital.
He was a product of a piano craze the likes of which the world has never seen --millions of handpicked young Chinese boys and girls working hard in schools in Shanghai, Beijing and throughout the provinces to master Europe’s 19th century piano classics. Their dream is often to come to the United States and Europe to sell millions of CDs and perform in our concert halls.
Message for Europe and the United States: Get ready for a flood of new piano artists coming in from the East, eager to succeed the present aging generation of Italians, Russians, Poles, the odd Brit or American and a few others who now dominate this rarefied art form.
A few scouts are already among us: the stylish Lang Lang is packing in huge audiences and selling CDs in the hundreds of thousands. Yundi Li won the big Warsaw Chopin Piano Competition--the first Asian to do so--a few years ago and has established himself as a major artist. Dozens of lesser lights from China, Korea and Japan are already here, scrambling to equal them.
What I find so intriguing about this trend is that these young players are mastering piano technique while also getting deeply into the musical subtleties of the great European composers--Schubert, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Franck, Debussy, Ravel, Prokofiev, Rachmanninov, Tchaikowsky and others. A friend who travels regularly to China tells me the young music crowd no longer pays attention to the centuries-old Chinese classics. Now it’s all Western, no matter how challenging for them.
The state of classical music in the United States has never been so dire. CDs of classics recorded by major U.S. or European players are lucky to reach a few thousand. Just two decades ago these recordings would have sold in tens of thousands. Concert halls are desperately trying gimmickry such as overhead video of the keyboard, or images of old Europe, to keep audiences coming. But our young audiences want something else.
No major pianist U.S. has emerged since Murray Perahia 30 years ago. American music students still try, but in smaller numbers and now alongside Asians at Juilliard and Curtis schools. Now leading U.S. music figures are saying the Asians are bringing new vitality to the classical scene.
I asked a musician who knows China what’s going on. “Our youngsters don’t want to practice eight hours a day,” he said. “The Chinese don’t mind. They are driven.” The New York Times has called this phenomenon a “huge export machine churning out virtuosos.”
It takes eight hours a day to master and memorize the standards from this world. Yet feats of memory--such as the 11,112 notes and nine key changes in Lizst’s “Dante” sonata--count for nothing. Having “good fingers” will get you nowhere. These are givens. It’s all about heart--and we used to think they couldn’t do heart.
Until a couple of years ago I was on the board of the London International Piano Competition, and had occasion to witness the gradual improvement of talent from the East. They were impressive in their dazzling technique but often lacked depth of interpretation. They knew they had these shortcomings. We rejected one Korean girl when we detected that her demonstration video had been tampered with. Her sound man had fiddled with her fortissimos to try to meet Western standards or performance. She just wasn’t strong enough to handle the “88-tooth monster.”
A Chinese prodigy, 13 years old and about 4 feet tall, was studying in Germany, and reached the semifinals in the London competition. I thought his rendering of Stravinsky’s “Petrushka Suite” deserved a medal for his ability to hit all the notes and scoot all over the piano bench to reach the extremes of the keyboard. He was crestfallen to be eliminated, but he’ll be back.
A friend who has heard me lament the encroachment of Asian musicians in the United States and Europe tries to calm my nerves. His view is that we should be happy to let the Asians keep our musical heritage alive until we decide to get involved again.
Okay, but where will our grandchildren go to study? Probably to Shanghai and Beijing.
©2007 by Michael Johnson. The album covers are courtesy Amazon.com, which has both albums for sale at bargain prices. This column first posted May 28, 2007.
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