Symphonies & Scorpions: Ephemeral Images
WELCOME TO THE 22nd DAILY INSTALLMENT OF SYMPHONIES & SCORPIONS: AN INTERNATIONAL CONCERT TOUR AS AN INSTRUMENT OF CITIZEN DIPLOMACY.
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Shanghai
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May 5: Many Lessons, Some Learned
My day begins with an idea to visit to the Shanghai Conservatory. In 1979 a brief excursion there altered my view of music, humanity, and the world. After thirty-five years, I’m eager to pay my respects and see how things have changed.
Considering the tug-of-wars we’ve had with bureaucracy so far, I have little expectation that my last minute request can be accommodated. I nevertheless ask the concierge at the Grand Hyatt to call the conservatory on my behalf and see what, if anything, might be arranged. Amazingly enough, the school’s international administrator, a young lady whose English name is Margaret and whose real name is Ma Xiaoming, graciously consents to give me a tour.
On my way out of the hotel I bump into one of my colleagues, a longtime violinist and a good friend, and ask if she wants to join me, explaining that I had done a master class at the Conservatory in ’79 with Joseph Silverstein, who was then the BSO’s esteemed concertmaster, assistant conductor, a truly great violinist, and a fine teacher. I got a surprising response: No thanks, she said, adding she felt she hadn’t been included in those ’79 plans because Silverstein gave preferential treatment to his former students who had won BSO positions—there had been a handful, including yours truly—and she had resented it. After thirty-five years, I guess she really had! I know that her displeasure isn’t directed at me but at Silverstein, and whatever validity there is to it, and maybe there is some, I also sense she might not be alone with that opinion. I tell her I appreciate her candor and there are no hard feelings at all. Yet it gives me yet more to chew on about complex relationships within a symphony orchestra, where there’s so much roiling under the surface that even the musicians themselves never know everything that’s going on.
As a result of Shanghai’s strong historical ties to Europe and the former Soviet Union, the faculty at the Conservatory was strongly grounded in classical training from its founding in 1927. All that met an abrupt roadblock during the Cultural Revolution. Anything with Western influence, including classical music, was declared decadent and tainted, and was purged from Chinese society. European music and instruments were destroyed along with the lives of the people connected with them. Conservatories were shut down and the professors “reeducated” in the countryside, but before they were hauled away many hid their music and instruments, risking their lives doing so. The Boston Symphony arrived in China just as a new cultural dawn was awakening, and the gates of the conservatory and of artistic expression were reopened after years of being shuttered, allowing the light to stream in.
If there was ever an example of technology not being a necessity for an excellent education, or—dare I even suggest, of actually being an impediment to education—I witnessed it at the Shanghai Conservatory in 1979. Resources were absolutely Spartan. Unheated classrooms had packed dirt floors. Poor lighting made it a challenge to read the lessons written on blackboards and large sheets of paper lining cement walls. Students, five-years-old and up, bundled in frayed overcoats and scarves, sat on wooden stools, their hands folded behind their backs. Yet the level of education and training going on there was enviable. When Joseph Silverstein and I gave a short class, we were asked questions worthy of any conservatory students. A group of youngsters performed for several of my colleagues and me, and not only were they technically proficient beyond their years, they played with a musicality one does not often hear at that age. Because much of their performance was played in unison, I assumed that their training might be along the lines of the Suzuki method that originated in Japan. When I asked their teacher at what point the students learn to read music and study theory—both of which are regrettably undervalued in Suzuki training—she responded somewhat perplexedly, “from day one, of course.”
There’s one image so etched in my memory that I could have sworn I had a photo of it, though I don’t. In addition to music, the Shanghai Conservatory taught instrument making. In 1979 it was a rare event when a great violin came through the city, so when the BSO musicians showed up with their collection of priceless 18th and 19th-century Italian violins it was like manna from heaven. Perhaps the finest instrument in the orchestra, a J.B. Guadagnini, was owned by Silverstein, and he graciously offered to show it to the faculty. Remember for a moment that in those days there was no Internet, no digital camera, no iPhone. In China, hardly anyone had any electronic technology at all. The gathered faculty didn’t even have a camera with them. The only way for them to record the details of the Guadagnini for future study was to look at it and to remember it! As they huddled around Silverstein and his Gudagnini I looked on, not at the violin, which I’d seen every day for years, but at the faces of the violin-making faculty. I have never in my life, before or since, seen such a look of intense concentration as in those few moments in which these dedicated individuals examined every molecule of this masterpiece with their eyes alone, too polite to ask to hold it. They never knew when or if they would ever see a great violin again. What was so evident was the devotion that they brought to their profession under the most trying of circumstances. Little did they know the lesson they were teaching me.
Today, as is apparent to everyone in the field, the tide has turned. The market in China for expensive violins is the hottest in the world, with business consortiums not blinking at million-dollar price tags. And the new instruments now being made in China are gaining the respect of musicians worldwide. In 1979 one would have been hard-pressed to make such a brazen prediction.
The original building that constituted the main part of the school in 1979 has been appropriately refurbished and the conservatory has expanded steadily along with funding and resources. Also, today is a beautiful spring day with blooming gardens, a striking contrast to the bitingly cold and gray early March day in ’79 when I first visited. The conservatory is now a multi-structured complex with a student body of 2,500, boasting modern technology and a new concert hall. For decades, it has been the common practice for the best students to travel to major conservatories in the West for advanced training. But with the explosion of new orchestras in China itself, conservatories like the ones in Shanghai and Beijing are beginning to reverse the traffic and attract international students.
At this point, there are few Chinese orchestras of the caliber of the top thirty orchestras in the US. The venerable Shanghai Symphony would be one of them, and their music director, Maestro Long Yu, has conducted many major American orchestras. But if the next thirty-five years bring as much progress to music in China as the last, and if American orchestras continue to struggle for relevance in the age of reality TV, you’ll find Americans flocking for jobs in Chinese orchestras.
To culminate my guided tour, Margaret receives permission for my request to sit in on a violin lesson in the new teaching building. As the lesson had already begun, we stand outside the studio door, waiting for a pause in the student’s performance of the Bach B Minor Partita. It’s adequate playing, not without discernible clunkers. I whisper to Margaret, “Funny how violin students make the same mistakes all over the world.”
When the student comes to a pause, we knock and enter. The room is small and spare: a window, an upright piano, and a professor seated at a simple desk covered with music. There’s an extra chair, which I’m invited to sit in. Margaret makes quick introductions. The student, a young lady, is wearing a sweatshirt with a big logo that says Jun Jug My MVP with a smiling monkey’s cartoon face wearing an American football helmet. The student is not particularly advanced and, playing from memory, stumbles too many times. Wrong notes go by the boards without her seeming to be aware of them. Musically, the student’s understanding of Bach is at about the same level as mine is of Jun Jug My MVP.
After a while the professor, who has so far said nothing other than to inform the student of the wrong notes, addresses her quietly yet firmly for several minutes. I don’t know a word of Chinese but I know from his tone of voice that it’s along the lines of the speech I’ve had to administer to a few of my own students from time to time. Something called the riot act. After we leave the room, Margaret confirms my suspicions and provides details.
The young lady has only a few weeks until a required recital, and the professor is sharing his concern she won’t be ready. I concur with his opinion, but when a student has difficulty memorizing, which seemed to be her biggest stumbling block, there are methodical ways a teacher can help, ranging from the mechanical to the aural to the visual to the conceptual. These days, some teachers don’t think memorizing is important, but I’ve found it to be a valuable discipline for young musicians, helping them cement a concerto in their minds and muscle memory for a lifetime. Some students memorize very naturally and there’s no issue. Others work hard at it in order to succeed. Most students, regardless, need guidance. What’s essential is for the teacher to know each of his students’ personalities and strengths and weaknesses, and from there determine what approach will work. Surprisingly, a lot of teachers don’t provide systematic training on memorizing, and I got the sense from my visit, but may well be totally wrong because of the language barrier, that that process was not happening at this lesson. Maybe the professor himself was a natural memorizer or had never given it much thought. Judging by his body language, his student’s overall performance was within his expectations, at least as far as my translation of Chinese to American body language went.
My tour finishes shortly thereafter, and I thank Margaret for taking the time to show me around. As I leave, she informs me that foreign musicians often come for a week or two to give classes and performances. Maybe that’s in the cards. I don’t think my snapshot view of the conservatory has given me a full picture of the quality of training there. Or maybe it has, but I would need a longer exposure to help convince me that the fervor and dedication of the professors in 1979 remains unabated.
Ephemeral Images
[image error]Water calligraphy on pavement at Xiangyang Park
My next destination is People’s Square but after just a few blocks I happen upon the quietly inviting Xiangyang Park. Along a tree-lined, paved brick promenade, elderly women dance with each other to Western and Chinese music humming over loudspeakers. A huddle of young men staring intently at the ground catches my attention. No, they’re not playing hopscotch. They’re practicing calligraphy, using the promenade’s square, gray brick tiles as an enlarged substitute for the boxes one finds on calligraphy paper. And their ink? Water in a bucket, which when brushed on the bricks renders remarkably detailed characters until they evaporate into the ether scant moments later. There is undeniably a philosophical statement here about existence.
From Xiangyang Park I take a subway to People’s Square. From the name, I anticipate a huge open area where the masses go to witness corrupt officials being publicly humiliated. Instead I find a beautifully landscaped public park, several blocks square, with throngs of urban strollers tranquilly refreshing their spirits among the trees, flowers, and children’s rides.
Around a lovely, little pond, groups of crones play cards and young couples contemplate their futures. Curiously, one industrious individual is fishing! I take a closer look into the shallow but almost opaque water. The only fish I can discern are finger-length goldfish. I wonder how many he’d have to catch to make a meal of it, and how he planned to cook them. “You should’ve seen the one that got away! It was at least two inches long. Maybe three!” Somewhere inside the deep recesses of my brain, a voice is telling me the idea of fishing for goldfish in a city pond is a profound metaphor for something about life, but I can’t figure out where to go with it. I think the ephemeral calligraphy is a better bet. When I reach the other side of the pond, obscured by a little peninsula with a café on it—charming location, mediocre food—I spot a school of large carp, so maybe the fisherman really does know what he’s doing. And as there are only six fish in the school I conclude he must be an excellent fisherman because obviously he’s caught all the rest.
What Goes Up…
For the man on the street peering up at Shanghai’s unfettered vertical growth, prosperity appears unreachable. I suppose it depends on which man you are, but it clearly has not been achieved across the board or without cost.
Walking along bustling Nanjing Road, which extends from People’s Square as a boisterous pedestrian shopping street, a destitute old man lies motionless on the ground in front of a busy fruit stand while the vendor hawks his merchandise and humanity flows around him with nary a downward glance. An old woman passes me, an untreated tumor totally covering one eye. A block further, another woman standing in front of a designer apparel store applies slices of cucumber to her face, pleading with indifferent passers-by to buy her product. Just outside the entrance to our ultra-modern, ultra-luxurious hotel, another elderly man lies propped against a pillar, fast asleep, his hand, curiously suspended in midair, grasping a short, sharp knife.
This isn’t to say there aren’t the ill, the indigent, and the uncared for everywhere else in the world. But the juxtaposition of poverty and wealth in Shanghai is extreme, particularly as the social safety net so often attributed to communist doctrine seems suspended in Shanghai, where the glaring banner of economic success—the forest of spectacular skyscrapers—is brandished for everyone to see.
And also when the haze of pollution covers the entire population, obscuring even the most imposing edifices. Fortunately, it hasn’t been so horrible since we arrived, though later in the day the downward view from my room on the 64th floor becomes a ghostly and ghastly gray-brown.
At least for the moment, Shanghai appears to have been so blinded by profit that it doesn’t mind being blinded by smog. The energy use in the building that houses our hotel alone could power a small city, and in Shanghai we’re talking about a city of twenty-four million, greater than the entire island of Taiwan and three times the population of New York City. Even with China’s growing commitment to solar power, the relentless drive for economic growth may come back to haunt them in the same way the Great Leap Forward did in the 1950s, when Mao’s predilection for backyard steel mills over agriculture led to economic collapse. Even as new thousand-foot spires puncture the Shanghai sky on a daily basis, someday it could all come crashing down to earth.
That sounds more pessimistic than I really am, but I like the rhetorical image. At the moment, Shanghai is an amazing city. Life on the street level has a normalcy about it that belies the futuristic skyline. The differences in architectural vision between Beijing and Shanghai seem to mirror the cities’ personalities. The former gravitates toward the heavily grandiose and monumental, and except for the ancient buildings like the Forbidden City and Temple of Heaven is not nearly as inspired as Shanghai.
Likewise, Beijing had a feel of being somewhat stiff and standoffish; Shanghai is more open and freer flowing. Could being near the seat of Chinese government make for an added degree of formality and wariness, as if one does not want to be caught smiling too much at an American stranger for fear of detection?
That’s all conjecture on my part, and it may be hocus-pocus, but in any event Shanghai is very different, perhaps because of its history as an international port and a center for no-holds-barred free enterprise. The energy feels much more positive and forward-looking. I don’t know if the Shanghaiese intentionally snub their noses at Beijing, but I get the sense that they’re out to prove they can outdo the capital in all ways.
Virtuosos of a Different Sort
After taking a rest, Ronan, Chan, and I attend an evening performance of Chinese acrobats. I’ve had more than enough exercise for the day, having walked many miles, and am happy to watch someone else work for a change.
There are two different acrobat shows playing in town: one more traditional, the other high-tech. We choose the former and don’t regret it. One routine is more amazing than the other, whether it’s jumping through hoops, gymnastic feats, balancing a dozen wine glasses on your forehead, sleight of hand tricks, spinning rings, spinning tops, or spinning dishes. Our heads were spinning. It’s great to see people performing for us as a change of pace!
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NEWS FLASH: MY FIRST POLITICAL THRILLER, THE BEETHOVEN SEQUENCE, IS SCHEDULED FOR RELEASE ON SEPTEMBER 8! A MENTALLY UNBALANCED MUSIC TEACHER BECOMES PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES! PREPOSTEROUS? STAY TUNED.
