China: With strings attached

[Haydnseek]

With strings attached
By Barbara Koh

Published: January 19 2007 16:57 | Last updated: January 19 2007 16:57

Away from the rumble of Shanghai’s highways and the cacophony of the shopping districts, stroll down side streets filled with rows of tall brick houses. In the early evening or on a weekend morning, you’ll hear the sound of classical music drifting from a piano, played by a 10-year old or a grandmother in her seventies. Wander down another alley toward drab high-rises and you’ll hear Beethoven or Mozart flowing from a violin, or perhaps a cello, accordion or flute.

In China, classical music is booming as mightily as the 1812 Overture. It’s fortissimo in Shanghai, home to China’s oldest orchestra, forte in Beijing and other lively cities, and on a crescendo in farther-flung areas. Commanding Y100-200 ($12.50-$25) per hour, private music teachers in Shanghai can readily earn more than five times the average per capita monthly income.

Yamaha, which runs music schools in dozens of countries, opened its first in China barely a year ago. The Shanghai school already boasts 640 students. About 20,000 amateurs tackle the annual Shanghai Musicians’ Association’s piano proficiency exam. In addition to performances by three leading resident orchestras, Shanghai’s classical calendar is supplemented with the likes of the Shanghai Sinfonietta and the Shanghai International Piano Competition. Beijing’s 120-musician China Philharmonic Orchestra, founded in 2000, won ovations on its 2005 international tour, with one London reviewer trumpeting: “China has become a classical music force to be reckoned with.”

China’s classical music renaissance is a product of its roaring economy. In order to project an ultra-modern culture to match their economic success, Chinese cities have been erecting extravagant 1,000- and 2,000-seat theatres, designed by renowned architects such as Frenchman Paul Andreu, London-based Zaha Hadid and the Bastille Opera creator Carlos Ott. Meanwhile, upwardly mobile families are investing heavily in their children’s cultural development.

“Once people have enough to eat and to wear, they need to improve their minds and souls,” says Zhao Zengmao, director of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music’s social education division. “Advanced countries all recognise that the arts are important.” Wei Chongde, founder of the Shanghai Fugim Violin Company, had his teenage son begin piano at age five, and cello two years later. “I want to cultivate [him] to be patrician,” says Wei. “If you go to a concert and can’t understand it” - you applaud at the wrong time, or don’t know how to talk about the music afterward - “it’s embarrassing.” Wei’s son owns most of Yo-Yo Ma’s CDs, practises at least an hour every day and takes weekly lessons with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra’s first cellist.

Aside from self-improvement, there are pragmatic reasons to jump on the classical bandwagon. Yo-Yo Ma, along with Deutsche Grammophon’s two young piano sensations Lang Lang (who at 17 played with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as a last-minute substitute for Andre Watts) and Li Yundi (at 18, the youngest winner in the 80-year history of the international Frederick Chopin piano competition) are worshipped like rock stars. Parents imagine their children playing their way to similar riches. Short of that, musically skilled kids get bonus points in the pressure-cooker competition to get into good universities and high schools.

Chinese parents also want their offspring to enjoy what they themselves could not. During the Cultural Revolution, classical music was banned. The Shanghai Conservatory, China’s oldest, was considered a “cradle of western music” and so “suffered the worst”, recalls its vice president, Hua Tianreng. “Half of our deans committed suicide,” he says. Ironically, musicians needed to perform the eight politically correct operas approved by Mao’s wife could escape the typical fate of manual labour in the countryside, so families desperately sought music teachers for their children - but couldn’t afford the instruments. “The Chinese didn’t have any way to learn or perform classical music,” Hua says.

Now, of course, they can do both. And they indulge: not only in Chopin, Lizst and modern composers such as Tan Dun or Charles Ives, but also in rap, jazz, funk, blues and Chinese traditional forms. Homegrown classical ensembles and string quartets proliferate. Yet tickets to hear well-known classical musicians in the modern, grand theatres can be prohibitively expensive; most classical music fans have to make do with listening to CDs at home.

In mountainous, rice-growing Guangxi, Peng Yingxue began piano lessons when she was four. She caught the ear of a Shanghai Conservatory teacher who visited her kindergarten; at nine, she entered the conservatory (which accepts only 18 per cent of applicants). Her father quit his clerical job and moved to Shanghai to look after her; her mother, an office assistant, sends money from home. Peng, 15, recognises that her parents have made this sacrifice for the sake of her future. “Some people think girls are only suitable for ordinary jobs, such as being secretaries,” she says. “A special skill provides you with better prospects, money and livelihood, and more choices.”

The piano is the instrument of choice in China’s classical boom. In 2002, about 600 amateur pianists took the Shanghai Conservatory’s assessment exam; this year, the number was 8,000 - perhaps because a piano requires slightly less dexterity and physical development than, say, a violin or clarinet. Zhao says that even senior citizens can pick it up - and about 10,000 in Shanghai have, many inspired by their grandchildren. Concert pianist Shen Wenyu, 19, adds that the newly rich may favour pianos because they “look classier and more prestigious” than other instruments. Many families say they chose the piano simply because everyone else did.

China produces more pianos and violins than anywhere else in the world: each year, about 370,000 pianos and about 2.5 million violins. In 2005, it exported about $883m-worth of instruments, the bulk of which was to the US, Japan, Germany and the UK. Simultaneously, renowned instrument makers such as Steinway & Sons have boosted their China operations. In developed countries such as Japan, up to a quarter of households own pianos. At the moment, just under 5 per cent of Shanghai households do, so piano companies are rhapsodic about China’s potential.

Although Chinese music students are surrounded by hip contemporary music of all types, many claim to prefer the classics. “I like classical better, although it’s more difficult,” says Peng, a Debussy and Ravel fan. “It’s been around for hundreds of years, and people still like it.” Classical music’s strength is its “established set of standards” says Hua. “We don’t play it differently from people in Italy or Germany.”

Despite the fervour for classical music, it gets little play in regular classrooms. “Music isn’t stressed in [China’s] exam-oriented education . . . and in high school, music education doesn’t even exist,” notes Hua, who says developing lifelong classical music lovers is more important than identifying China’s next classical mega-performers. He and other Chinese scholars downplay Li Yundi’s and Lang Lang’s stardom. They’re “not Mozarts”, Hua says. “We have a batch of students [graduating] every year near their level.” But he’s upbeat about the fate of China’s classical musicians, whether or not they score Deutsche Grammophon contracts. “Our students have a very bright future, because of the good economic growth,” Hua says. “They’ll be in demand.”

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

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