New Years Eve, enjoying the Silversterkonzert from Munich, with Mariss Jansons and Lang Lang and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks. I should've been listening to Daniel Barenboim's all-Ravel concert with the Berliner Philharmoniker , like my pals did, but it's New Year's Eve ! Not the time to be safe and sober. What is wrong about having fun ? Some of us put enough into music year-round, that we can afford to party ! Like most New Year concerts, the programme was wide ranging and light hearted, a buffet with popular treats asnd more exotic fare.
The kick-off started, appropriately, with Leonard Bernstein Candide overture, but Jansons and the BRSO showed their true mettle in Debussy's Clair de Lune, in the arrangement by Leopold Stokowski. Big, full bodied yet classy and stylish. Aha, a piano piece for large orchestra on a programme with a megastar pianist ! Witty good humour. Then a bit of Elgar, gentler, more personal Elgar, closer to the composer's soul than public blockbusters. Elgar's Wand of Youth Suite no 2 is marked op. 1b though it was completed for publication long after Enigma, Gerontius and Pomp and Circunstance. The suites are compilations of some of Elgar's earliest works, some written to entertain children, but anyone, including adults can respond to the magic that is "the wand of youth". Here we heard "The Wild Bears", a jolly piece which dances with vivacious freedom. A joyous performance ! Sibelius, too, in the form of Kuolema from Valse Triste op 44, and Antonín Dvořák Slavonic Dance op 72/15.
Xian Xing Hai, (middle) in Paris with Nie Er and other compsoers
Lang Lang joined Jansons and the orchestra for the andante to Mozart Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 21 KV 467. The Herkulessaal in Munich is a tiny hall and Lang Lang usually plays very big halls indeed. It might be fashionable in some circles to sneer at him because he's successful, but he learned his music the hard way, working his way up. So here we heard the "real" Lang Lang to some extent, playing for pleasure, adapting for the small hall and the more intimate vibe. Without a pause, Jansons segued into Xian Xing Hai's Yellow River Concerto, the section "Ode to the Yellow River". In the west, people just don't understand the role of Western classical music in China. Interest was established fairly early on in China, enough so that it could support conservatories in Shangahi and Beijing from the early years of the 20th century. Even now, it's normal for middle class kids to play piano and know the basics of classical music, both western and Chinese. Xian Xing Hai (冼星海, 905 -1945) was a virtuoso pianist but also studied composition and Chinese classsical music. Like so many Chinese intellectuals and modernizers he gravitated to Paris when it was the place to be in creative terms. Japan invaded China in 1931, occupying much of North China. By the time Xian returned to Shanghai, the country was in turmoil. Xian wrote the soundtrack for Ma-Xu Weibang's film A Song at Midnight (夜半歌聲) which is marketed as "The first Chinese horror movie" but much more sophisticated than a horror movie, with pointed references to the social and political situation and also to western classical music, to Beethoven and to Freedom. Please read more about it HERE. When civil war broke out Xian headed to Yenan, following the Communists. There he wrote the original Yellow River Cantata, (黄河大合唱) for orchestra, chorus and soloists. Please read more about it here - it is a very good piece "more" than just music, it's a kind of expression of the soul of Chinese history, symbolized by the Huangho River, the cradle of Chinese civilization. The Yellow River Concerto suite was created decades after Xian's death. It's not nearly as good as the full cantata, but it is a vehicle for piano and orchestra, which is why Lang Lang played it here. It's new to Jansons and the BRSO, so they didn't do it justice. More mainstream was the Chopin Grande valse brillante op. 18, closer to what Jansons, the orchestra and Lang Lang usually do. It's not fair to sneer at Lang Lang because he's so famous. Pianists (and violinists) have always been "pop stars". Think Chopin and Liszt or Paganini. Or Bernstein and Gergiev. Lang Lang has inspired millions of ordinary Chinese to take up western classical music : imagine the same happening in other countries where people seem to take pride in despising "elitist" art forms. Jansons has recorded Yūzō Toyama
(b 1931) Yugen, a suite for ballet, and here we heard the Men's Dance . Its use of percussion provides a strong foundation for the keening string legato and flashes of brass : you can almost visualize these ideas translated for dance.
Back to more standard New Year's Eve party fare with Pietro Mascagni Cavalleria rusticana. Intermezzo,Johannes Brahms, Hungarian Dance No 5 and the Prelude to La Revoltosa by Ruperto Chapi (1851-1909) a bit of "Spanish" colour to continue the "international" theme. To conclude, the Finale to György Ligeti's Romanian Concerto, sneaking in a dose of modern for audiences who assume they might be averse to the avant garde.
A Song at Midnighthas cult status in Chinese cinema. Although the film compares to Lon Chaney's The Phantom of the Opera (1925), the music and the socio-political context lift it above the level of ordinary horror story. A Song at Midnight (夜半歌聲) is usually billed as the first Chinese horror movie, but that's not what makes it really interesting. The music was written by China's foremost composer in the western style, Music is integral to the film, and is part of its symbolism.
Xian Xing Hai (1905-45) was born destitute in Macau but managed through hard work and scholarships to train at conservatories in Shanghai, Beijing and Paris. He was a virtuoso flautist, in the western classical tradition, but studied Chinese music as well, aiming to create a unique new form for a new nation. The May Fourth Movement was an attempt to modernize China through changes in art and social attitudes. Cinema was thus part of this reformist zeal. Chinese movies entertained, but also educated. The studio was Xin Hua (New China). The writer and director was Ma-Xu Weibang (馬徐維邦) (1905-61) like Xian, a poor orphan who made his way up in progressive film circles. A Song at Midnight was made in 1937, when the Japanese invasion escalated, and Shanghai itself fell to the occupiers. Xian made the long trek from Shanghai to Yenan to join the Communist party. I don't know what happened to Ma-Xu but he ended up in Hong Kong,
A Song at Midnight is art film, every bit as much as French and German film in this period often combined high cinematic standards with serious music. Caretakers in a disused opera house patrol the building with lanterns,
beating time with a stick. A shadow appears at midnight singing a song
of lost love.When we hear the shrouded figure sing, we can hear, even through the grainy recording, that he has a glorious, western operatically classically trained voice. A woman appears with her elderly maid. She's come to listen to the shadowy figure, for he sounds like her lost lover, an opera singer called Song Dang Ping. Her expression is steely, not sentimental. She's wearing a mourning robe. She thinks her lover had been brutally murdered.
In a rainstorm, a new theatre troupe arrive in town. They wear snappy western outfits, and the women wear makeup and fashionable dresses: what a contrast to the dilapidated old building thick with cobwebs, with old-fashioned paper in the windows instead of glass. Beautifully photography. Troupes like this used to tour the country bringing modern theatre and modern ideas, and often performed in makeshift places. The Director hands out the script. They're doing a piece of music theatre about a woman who,has lost her lover on the mighty Yellow River. Xian Xing Hai would write his masterpiece, The Yellow River Cantata in exile in the caves at Yenan. The Yellow River Cantata describes the might river, also known as a "China's Sorrow" and its role in shaping Chinese history (Read more about it here) The song in the film becomes part of the wider work. The small town agit prop theatre troupe is translated into a seminal work of modern Chinese music.
The actor Sun Xiao Ou practises singing the new anthem, alone, in the dark, but he can't quite get it right. Then the ghostly voice of Song Dang Ping sings it for him, bringing out the deeper meaning. and intensity. Posters go up in town, announcing the new show. Now Sun Xiao Ou can sing with passion, "O! Huang Ho!" (O Yellow River). he's a hit! That night Sun creeps into the bowels of the theatre to thank Song for teaching him. Wonderful sequence where single, hollow piano notes lure young Sun up rickety stairs. Intense discords and dissonance as Song Dang Ping materializes out of the shadows, holding a candle.The shrouded Song Dang Ping tells his story. He was a revolutionary who worked in theatre groups just like the one Sun is working in. He sang versions of western operas about freedom, costumed in a Beethovenian greatcoat before a line of Napoleanic soldiers. In this simple image, the film connects to Fidelio, to the rise of democracy and freedom in the west, and to the way China was subjugated by foreign powers, not only Japanese but European. the ideals of Liberté et Fraternité didn't apply to subject nations.
He falls in love with Li Xiao Mei. Unfortunately she isn't free, she's kept by a rich man. In itself this is a subtle hint as to the deeper meaning in the film. Her jealous protector has Song tortured in front of her, before acid is thrown at his face. He survives, hiding out with a peasant family, whose small daughter adores him. The day comes when the bandages are removed. Song is hideous, his matinee idol good looks destroyed. "No! No !" he wails in horror," I've become a devil" He sends the little girl to Li Xiao Mei, to tell her that he's died. She goes insane. Juxtaposed frames intersect suggesting how her mind fragments. She's no longer any use to the criminal leader. Song hides himself inside the disused theatre, where Li's servant brings her to hear the mystery song at midnight.
Song knows he's beyond help, but can Li be saved ? Young Sun sings for Li, who comes into her garden, wraith-like, thinking that Song has returned, while Song watches from behind a bush. Music returns, sweetly fluttering like mad nightingales. Li is in a pavilion over a lake, delirious with joy, but still delusional.
Crowds flock to see the new play in town where Sun reprises Song's old role as a Florestan figure. Song watches from the rafters. The music then borrows Bach Air on a G string, while the camera pans on Song's expressions of tenderness and sorrow. Sun has a girlfriend called Lu Die, a perky modern girl, very different from Li, who has been seen in Republican period costumes. Times have changed, but wicked people stay the same. Lu Die is in her changing room when the bad guy who destroyed Song and Li comes in, to slithering strains of Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue.. It's not hard to read a political dimension into thius, given the situation in China at the time. Finishing the opera with a rousing finale about defiance, Sun rushes backstage and saves Lu from getting raped but the bad guy shoots her dead. Then Song appears, confronting the villain with the face he had destroyed. Having heard the gunshot, a crowd chases Song and the villain up into the rafters, through trap doors. Great shot of the outside of the theatre lit up by electric bulbs, and the grimy. cobweb covered backstage that is Song's world.
The villain falls and is killed. Young Sun calls for calm but the soldiers want to catch Song at all costs. Waving firebrands the mob pursue "the monster" in a sequence that references the 1931 Frankenstein movie, shot in almost abstract dark and light, which is very effective. It doesn't matter whether the mob are Chinese or Transylvanian or whatever. They exist the world over. Sun explains everything to Li, who faints with horror. The tower Song flees to is set alight and he jumps to his death. Li awakes as if from a nightmare. The final shots show Sun supporting her as she stares into the distance.
On BBC Radio 3 "The Choir" there's a piece on Xian Xing Hai's Yellow River Cantata, (黄河大合唱), describing a new edition in English to encourage greater awareness of the piece in the west. Good idea! But The Yellow River Cantata is so central to the Chinese psyche that I'm not sure that western performances would really help. In this increasingly monophone world, the last thing we need is more west-centrism. We need to learn things from other perspectives. Even Chinese raised overseas seem to be losing their identity. A better approach may be to listen to really idiomatic recordings, and develop a wider understanding of modern China. Only then, perhaps the Cantata and its true emotional impact will fall into place.
Xian Xing Hai (Sin Sing Hoi in Cantonese)
(冼星海;) was born 13/6/1905, the posthumous child of a fisherman in Macau, "the lowest of the low", as boat people were looked down on by farmers and townsfolk. Yet almost from the start he seemed destined to rise above extreme hardship. Aged six, he went to Singapore with his mother, who had a job as an amah. Yet, aspiration already. He studied first in an English school, then in a Singapore school affiliateded to Lingnan University, where he learned Chinese and western music. In 1918, mother and son were back in Guangzhou, struggling hard to put the son through music school. He was a clarinet prodigy, known as "The Southern Piper" because he'd grown up in the nam yang (south). At the conservatories of Beijing and Shanghai, he specialized in violin and composition. From the very start Xian worked with both Chinese and western instruments, though he composed in a western style. He wrote many musicology papers, including treatises on Chinese music.
Already, he was fired by the idealism of the May Fourth Movement, who saw modernization as China's way forward "China has no need for private and aristocratic music", he wrote as a youth, "those who study music should take full responsibility to rescue China from its dormant state". Like so many Chinese progressives at the time, he went to Paris, where he studied with Paul Oberdorffer, Noel Géallon, Vincent d'Indy and Paul Dukas. Some Chinese students, like Zhou En lai, were wealthy, but the majority, like Ma Si Cong , struggled to survive. It was a sign of how dedicated they were.
Xian returned to China in 1935, where he made a living composing music for films, including A Song at Midnight, (1937) the first Chinese horror movie, which is a lot more than just a horror movie. It's a commentray on politics and cultural change in China - read more HERE. . Movies in China weren't merely escapist entertainment, but a form of social education. Read more about that on this site. It's interesting to compare Xian Xing Hai with Hanns Eisler : both idealists, both intellectuals, both convinced that film was a means of reaching the masses.Both wrote serious art music, but also songs which could communicate with the less sophisticated, and both worked with progressive film directors. This period could be called "Chinese Weimar". The Japanese invasion proved a catalyst. Chinese people organized mass relief and charity efforts, music, theatre and film very much part of the process. Whereas European intellectuals were forced to flee from Hitler, Chinese intellectuals became drawn into the movement for national resistance. Some could go south to Hong Kong or Macau (Xian's birthplace) to continue their struggle, but Xian associated with the Chinese Communist Party and made the long march to Yan'an, where the partisans lived in mountain caves in primitive conditions.
The Yellow River Cantata was written in the Yan'an caves, securing it a place in the Valhalla of Communist iconography. That's how I learned it as a child, broadcast full volume from CCP schools, night and day, during the Cultural Revolution. Only very much later did I learn it as proper music. It opens with a stirring rally. Already the "water" images in the music surge forward. "Friends" says the baritone, "listen to the song of the Yellow River". The choir sings the famous staccato chorus "Bai yao, bai yao", followed by a serene passage which suggests the eternal flow of a great, powerful river. "Bai yao, hey" sings the chorus (with bass drum) "...hey". The Huang Ho was known as "China's Sorrow" because it would flood and kill millions, yet it also fertilized the soil and became one of the cradles of Chinese civilization. The next two movements refer to 5000 years of Chinese history and the perserverance of the peasantry. The fourth movement is based on regional folk song. Hence the two simple vocal lines and minimal orchestral support that mimics traditional folk instruments. Then the full chorus joins in : the peasants will beat these new sufferings caused by the Japanese invasion. Then a haunting, elegaic melody. A soprano sings a lament for women, who for centuries have borne the brunt of suffering. As her voice rises, joined by full orchestra, one feels hope for a new society.
The most famous section is the rousing "Defending the Yellow River", where full chorus sing a defiant round, expressing the peasant's struggle to beat off the invaders and remake a stronger, better China. What a blast this is, nothing like normal, polite choral fare. Moments of reflection, where "Chinese" motifs are heard, before the magnificent finale, announced by trumpets. "Ai ai, Huangho!" the choruses sing gloriously, faster and faster to a single note crescendo held for several bars. "Ai!" Perhaps it's propaganda music but it certainly reaches deep emotional chords in those who understand the history of China. That's perhaps why it means so much to so many people, who can hear the pain and dignity in the music, far deeper than the political context. It was even performed in Taiwan in 1991, where the Gou Ming Dang regime loathe everything about the Communists. That shows that the Yellow River Cantata surpasses boundaries and unites all Chinese, everywhere.
HERE is a link to a very good documentary on Xian Xing Hai, with archive film and photos you won't see too often. Even though it's in Mandarin it's not hard to follow. There is a recent movie "Song of Star and Sea" (refering to Xian's given names which mean "star" and "sea". I've only seen the trailer but it looks awful. HERE is a link to the best recording, I think, by the Central China Orchestra and Chorus. Fabulous choral singing, and very sharp soloists. Much better than the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir recording, conducted by Cao Ding, used on the BBC Radio 3 broadcast.
Xian Xing Hai wrote two versions of The Yellow River Cantata, the first in 1939 for the limited resources at Yanan, the second reorchestrated for larger orchestra and choir, written the following year in Russia, to which he travelled with the film director, Yuan Mu Zhi (袁牧之) who made Street Angel (1937), one of the icons in Chinese cinema. (read more here, with full download). Xian died of penumonia, exacerbated by poor treatment, in the Soviet Union in 1945, aged only 40. The Yellow River Piano Concerto isn't his, but a suite created by others, but is famous because it was performed in the US in the 1970's, part of the rapprochment between China and the US. Two clips below : The Central China Orchestra mentioned above and a People's Liberation Army version from 1956. It's a beautiful archive film, made by people for whom the Anti Japanese war was not theory but living memory.