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Land of Ancient Traditions and Modern Energy By SEYMOUR LIPKIN
As part of a Chinese cultural exchange program called People's Association for Friendship With Foreign Countries (in which my colleague Jerome Lowenthal has also participated), I was invited to tour China at the end of March, to give recitals and master classes. My wife and I visited five cities and were met with the most extraordinary hospitality, especially since we were guests of the municipal government of Guangzhou. We were met at every airport with flowers, a translator was with us at all times, and we were taken out to all meals and driven to every destination, often by a delegation of five or six people. The mayors of Lianyungang and Guangzhou met us at dinners; there were many toasts and many gifts.
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| Seymour Lipkin with students at a middle school in Lianyungang. |
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The concerts were often made into ceremonial occasions, with banners, speeches, and an abundance of flowers. One introductory speaker insisted on reading a long biography in Chinese and English. (Though he had some difficulty pronouncing Heifetz and Guarneri, Juilliard came out fine.) I was presented with honorary professorships at four different conservatories. (I inquired whether this entailed getting a pension, and my host responded, "Yes, an honorary pension.")To inexperienced Western eyes, China is an astonishing country. There was a kind of fierce energy on all sides, which was extremely impressive. One could almost reach out and touch it. Conversations in Chinese seemed to go back and forth in short bursts of great intensity. The traffic moved with a kind of heedlessness; one of our drivers went 90 miles an hour routinely, weaving in and out of traffic (cutting very close) without blinking an eye. In the city, drivers cut diagonally across lanes of traffic and cyclists darted in front of cars, all seemingly without any sense of caution or danger.
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| Bicycles and cars share the streets in the historic quarter of Shanghai. |
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Although I am far from knowledgeable about Chinese history, it is tempting to connect this enormous, outward-going energy with the Maoist effort, a number of years back, to extirpate the deep-set convictions of Confucian ethics. The latter premised setting oneself morally in order, first, believing this would expand outward, to family and then larger society. One could imagine that the Maoists (who felt Confucianism prevented true Communist thought) set the tone for the unstoppable, outward energy one feels so strongly.The country is, by all accounts, in the midst of a most extraordinary growth, taking place especially during the last 10 or 15 years. Everywhere one sees new buildings, daring architecture. In Shanghai there is a very striking juxtaposition of disparate building styles; there seemed little interest in fitting these styles into an overall whole. The streets teem with people and shops, giving a similar impression.On the other hand, there is still a strong sense of very ancient tradition. One episode in particular brought home our previous ignorance of the immensity and diversity of Chinese life. In Lianyungang every year there is a festival, bringing together groups from far-flung provinces to celebrate the arrival of spring. The enormous diversity of styles in dance, costume, and music showed deep-rooted traditions of strongly varied kinds.
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| Lipkin (in hat) and his wife, Ellen Werner, pose with the sponsor of his visit to Nanjing, Fan Meng (far right), and his family. |
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The most amazing ensemble (and the winner of the competition) was a group of perhaps 20 drummers, who performed a long and quite complex series of rhythmic patterns (from memory, of course) with absolute precision and without a hint of error—all with great verve, punctuated by whacks on a huge bass drum and tremolos on a tremendous gong at the rear. They also produced the most finely graduated, very long crescendos and very gradual accelerandos, absolutely in unison, which any Western orchestra might well envy. This was all done by the most careful listening to each other (no conductor, of course). Chamber musicians, take note!I visited six conservatories, including the major ones in Beijing and Shanghai, where, in the latter city, I heard seven or eight hours of students at each conservatory and gave a total of seven recitals. The students were of course on a high level of seriousness, with some quite gifted people among them. An additional pleasure was meeting with previous teachers of some of my own students. The repertoire was pretty much confined to the big Romantic works; nobody played Bach or Mozart, or anything past 1900 (except Prokofiev).A revealing incident took place during one of the question-and-answer sessions I held with music students. I had been speaking about what I feel should be our central aim, namely, to discern and communicate the emotional sense of the work, not merely to conquer its technical problems. A student asked, "How can I find out what the emotional sense is?" (Really a very good question.) I had to say, first, see what the composer told you in words, and second, use your instinct to try to sense it—really an inadequate answer, but the only one I could think of.One very interesting, if curious, ceremony occurred at an arts school in Lianyungang. The entire school body of about 1,000 students was called especially to school (it was not a school day). They sat outdoors, strictly arranged in rows, with the little ones in front, the older ones in back. They sat silently as speeches were made, evidently extolling the visitors; we sat on a raised platform with long rows of dignitaries, in front of banners and a multitude of flowers. I made a brief thank-you speech. After the honorary professorship was presented, a couple of students were brought up to play short excerpts on a tiny piano with microphone, for my comments. Of course, there was little to do except make some vague observations and pat them on the back. I played a three-minute piece, and the students marched out (in an extraordinary mix of cultures) to the strains of Johann Strauss's Radetzky March (Radetzky, of course, being a Viennese military hero). The entire episode had the curious sense of a preset ritual, with everyone playing an ordained role.The trip was an extraordinary experience, and left little doubt in my mind that we will be feeling the impact of Chinese civilization very strongly in the next years.Seymour Lipkin, a faculty member since 1986, teaches piano and chamber music.
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