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China Tour Blog #2: Why Did We Come to China?
Possibility in action, on tour in China.
6/18/2007 4:40 PMThe circumstances could not have been less favorable for a concert. The night before we had played the first concert - at the all-important concert hall in Beijing. It had been a very late evening (I myself didn't get to bed before 2 a.m.) and a very early start. One student kept the busses waiting for 45 minutes because he had broken the alcohol rule the night before and overslept with a hangover. The train station was a morass of humanity - thousands upon thousands of people crammed together and jostling each other. We stood in the crowd for over an hour before we boarded the train for the two and a half hour journey to Shijiazhuang in the Hebei Province.
The journey flew by for me because with YPO one is always surrounded by interesting, eager, engaged people and we had the additional joy of Richard Dyer's brilliant conversation and vivid reminiscences of the music world. However, the arrival at Shijazhuang was a shock. The whole town was enveloped in the thickest most lethal smog I think I have ever encountered (Dr Lee reminded me that Santiago, Chile sixteen years ago was just as bad). Buildings only hundreds of yards away were invisible and grime coated everything. The short walk across the main square to the hotel had several of us gasping for breath and many of the YPOers quickly covered their faces with scarves and masks. The soot on the window in my hotel room was so thick that I could hardly see out.
Not surprisingly Jennine, our wonderful second trombonist, an asthma sufferer, who had been overcome the previous evening and hadn't been able to play the concert, was stricken with a major attack. Dr Lee, several chaperones and Mark Churchill tried feverishly over lunch to make her special breathing equipment work , but clearly she was going to be hors de combat for another evening.
The food, though plentiful, seemed dull and tasteless and the drink, a choice between warm, pallid lemonade and warm, pallid orange juice I found undrinkable. The strain and exhaustion on everyone's face was obvious, so at 2 p.m. I instructed everyone to go to their rooms and rest before the 4.30 departure for the rehearsal.
I went up to my room, unpacked a few belongings and collapsed on the bed. The next thing I knew my assistant Chris Lees burst in to the room to wake me - he had had to persuade the hotel staff IN CHINESE that he had to get into the room to wake me, since the telephone was broken. It was 5 p.m.
It turned out that others were also late and so it wasn't till about 5.20 pm that we managed to set off for the hall, with the concert due to start at 7.30 and a new program to perform! Strauss's Till Eulenspiegel was on the docket and the Clarinet Rhapsody on themes from Rigoletto for clarinet, as well as Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony - all music we hadn't performed since May 22nd. There were also a couple of Chinese pieces that we hadn't managed to learn before we left Boston, because the music hadn't appeared in time.
The talk in the bus around me was mostly about the ghastly smog and the incredibly depressing area in which we found ourselves. It all looked like a bomb site, with broken buildings and half constructed ones. I am afraid I found myself asking myself why on earth had we come to China and to this God-forsaken town. Hardly Possibility thinking!
When we arrived at the hall, perhaps because I was so groggy from the sleep, or just shaken from the exhaustion of all the travel, I fell when I got off the bus. I landed on the pavement causing a painful bruise on my chest and a scrape up my left hand. It was very hard to walk and almost unbearable to laugh, which I kept doing, because everyone around me was so funny.
Once in the hall, things didn't improve: the timpani were unusable - Yi Wei, our timpanist had to bend down and tune the drums with her hands, since the pedals were all broken; the four double basses that had been loaned to us were in various states of disrepair. Of course we had no 2nd trombone for Till or Tchaik 6th (!) and so Chris Lees was put to work to concoct a new part. I was in such pain I could hardly move my arm and had to hold the left side of my body to stop the jabs of pain.
As soon as we began Till Eulenspiegel, something miraculous happened: the sounds out of the violins in the opening Once Upon a Time phrase, were so exquisite, so pure and radiant that the world we were in was suddenly transformed. Phrase after phrase poured out of those charmed young hands and lips with more clarity, beauty and sense than we had ever achieved before. I literally couldn't believe my ears.
Every treacherous passage, every awkward corner was suddenly polished and pristine. Aidan, our 16 year old, high-school-junior horn player rendered the notorious horn opening "lick", which bedevils and haunts every horn player, as effortlessly and perfectly as if he had been preparing for months for an audition with the New York Philharmonic - or perhaps, I should say, even more perfectly, since his playing was mischievous and piquant and, as Richard Dyer said later, positively Mozartian in it's wit, which certainly few aspiring professional horn jocks would think of trying at an audition.
But it went on for there: complex passages of thick counterpoint that had remained muddled or opaque in previous rehearsals and performances were suddenly crystal clear. The acoustics of the hall helped the clarity and sweetness of the sound and perhaps the fact that I was obviously in pain and unable to use the full range of my gestures caused the players to listen even more intently.
I broke off half way and complimented everyone in the orchestra in the most lavish way. I told them I was amazed by the sheer mastery and emotional intelligence demonstrated in the room and spoke about the tour so far. I said that, though the going in China had at times been extremely tough, I hadn't heard anyone complain. The playing we had just experienced was evidence that the music-making we did together was able to literally transcend the most untoward circumstances.
I then asked Jim Larsen to apologize publicly to the orchestra for having broken the alcohol rule and kept everyone waiting for nearly an hour, which he did with grace and genuine contrition.
The rest of the rehearsal continued at the same miraculous level. Amy's playing in the Rigoletto was impeccable and expressive, like a great singer. Has this kid been practicing, I wondered? I only told her at 2 p.m. that she would be playing the concerto that night! The second trombone problem was solved when Kelly Csillam, one of our extra horn players for Mahler, offered to transpose the part, and I swear even a trained ear wouldn't have been able to tell that the "wrong" instrument was being used. The final chorale in Tchaikovsky 6th, though it began with a most unpromising clank on the Chinese gong - a fifth of the size of the one called for - was magisterial and perfectly in tune. This was clearly going to be a great concert.
The orchestra was ready. Now there was still the matter of the audience. The audience was one of the youngest I have seem in years, including some very young children indeed. There were virtually no older people there. But how would they respond to our music? I had been told that Chinese audiences are not used to hearing pieces that last for more than 6 or seven minutes and so this was almost certainly the first time that many (perhaps any) of them would have heard anything like a full program of symphonic music. The clapping when I came out was so feeble that it barely lasted long enough to get me to the podium. The first piece, the Adams: A Short Ride in a fast Machine - landed like a lead balloon. The applause was so tepid, that I realized I had no chance to get backstage before it would die down altogether, so I stayed put and went right into the Chinese Jasmine Flower, which to my delight was greeted, when we started, with friendly applause
At the end of Amy's spectacular performance of the Rigoletto Fantasy, which would undoubtedly have elicited a whooping standing ovation in Jordan Hall, got only a polite response. At that point, I went into high action, starting to clap wildly myself and encouraging the audience to do the same. Instead of leaving with the soloist, as is customary, to allow the soloist a solo bow, I stayed on stage and whipped the audience into energetic clapping. When Amy reappeared she was greeted with waves of wild applause and even a couple of whoops.
Next came Till Eulenspiegel. Since the overhead projector with a section by section explication, wasn't working, I described the story and introduced the main themes and instruments, with the wonderful, regal Cathy Chan translating. During my talk, Patrick Wasserman and his bass collapsed on the floor with a loud crack when his bass stool actually broke under him! This was like the Keystone Kops! However, I could tell that the audience was riveted by the story telling - the Chinese are, after all, obsessed with stories - and so I knew that our highly characterized performance had a good chance of grabbing their attention. The performance was extraordinary. Till is a challenge for even the great orchestras and YPO played the pants of it - and with all the delicacy and transparency that allowed the many (some say too many) voices to be heard. The sound of the strings was silken and warm and the crackling rhythms of Till's cheeky tunes were perfectly realized. This was a performance by a top notch orchestra, at the top of its game, hardly the playing of a bedraggled bunch of teenagers, jet-lagged and bedeviled by mishaps.
When the performance of Till was greeted with the same kind of tepid applause as before, I threw all decorum to the winds and clapped wildly myself. Suddenly, the audience got the point: a concert was supposed to be fun and the enthusiastic response of the audience was actually an essential part of the experience. I gave every section, every soloist a bow and the audience responded as enthusiastically as we could have wished.
From then on it was plain sailing.
The Tchaikovsky rehearsal, just before the concert, had been particularly moving for me. I had been terribly effected by the thought of the plight of the people in a town living in such horrendous pollution. I talked to the orchestra about the despair that it caused in me and told them that it seemed to be echoed in the cry of pain in Tchaikovsky's music. I said that I was sure that the music they were about to share with the audience was likely to hit a very deep nerve. I asked them to play from their guts, so that the music would reach even the most unsuspecting members of the audience. I said that, though the circumstances surrounding our concert probably couldn't have been worse, the impact of the music was likely to be greater than if we were playing a concert in Carnegie Hall. To my surprise, and, I must say, to my deep gratitude, the orchestra answered with a loud shuffling of feet. I knew they were all on side.
So, when the Tchaikovsky started, I found I could draw from the orchestra a truly remarkable kind of intensity - something that had not been available until then - and they delivered one of the best performances of the symphony I can remember.
As the almost human voices in the violins in the final bars literally sobbed, I distinctly heard weeping from audience - and Yi-Wei, who was watching the audience has verified it. The ovation, after a long, long pause, was tumultuous, including prolonged rhythmic hand-clapping. The diffidence and the barrier of formality had now been completely broken and the Chinese, so completely unfamiliar with this kind of intensity in music, unleashed a wave of gratitude and excitement. The three encores - a Chinese March, Stars and Stripes and Nimrod, each introduced with some explanation, raised the intensity of the response even further.
I told the audience how far we had come and how taxing the journey had been, and yet how happy we were to be there with them. When I said how difficult we found the air to breathe, they laughed out-loud. They know how impossible their situation is, but what can they do? When I talked of eternal friendship between our young people they clapped so loud as if they could burst. And at the end, after Nimrod,we received that rarest of all things in China: a standing ovation - coaxed out of them, to be sure - but willingly and gratefully given.
Many of us walked out into the audience, signing programs, hugging children and each other and endlessly being photographed. It HAD indeed been a more rewarding and meaningful experience than a concert in Carnegie Hall and the faulty instruments, the broken chairs, the exhaustion, my injury, even the ghastly pollution - all seemed irrelevant compared to the glowing faces all around us expressing such joy, gratitude and hope. Hope for what? God knows. But for that moment all of us were united by the great music that we had shared and I very much doubt that anybody was wondering why we had come to China.
~Ben Zander |
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