But not the old ones.
For the present moment I'm listening to a 3-CD collection featuring the pianist Liu Shikun. Born in 1939, Liu is one of the older-generation musicians who have become textbook symbols. Academia people (seem to) revere him and hail him as one of the best Chinese pianists, and music lovers generally just accept this idea. But then, Liu is more heard of than really heard. First, classical music recording industry is always remarkably weak in China, so, before this 3-CD set, no one around me knew whether he had made any recording or not. Then, Liu doesn't perform often, and when he does perform in concerts, few music lovers would pay to hear him -- tickets are always expensive and no one would risk the money for someone he had never actually heard. So I've always been curious about his playing. That's why I want to buy the CDs in the first place.
The "unfamiliar connections" referred to in the title occur when I browse through the track list. All are "historical" recordings made around 1960, except one. Liu performs a few concertos here, and is accompanied by, apart from the most important Chinese orchestra under one of the most revered Chinese conductor (who is 90 years old now), Dresden Philharmonic under Heinz Bongartz, and -- my jaw dropped -- Moscow Philharmonic under Kirill Kondrashin!
A rarely heard old Chinese pianist performing with Kirill Kondrashin?! This fact alone can make him a legend in the heart of many music lovers in China. Yet few people know about this and even care about this!
*****
I was reminded of a treasured conversation I had this summer with the 89-year-old composer Zhu Jian-er in my Archivist's office at the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Zhu is unquestionably my favorite Chinese composer, not that he began writing symphonies in his 60s (after the Opening-up Policy, that is) and wrote no less than 11 of them (if you include the Sinfonietta) in less than 20 years, not that none of the 11 sounds the least similar to each other in their stunning display of all sorts of techniques -- from fugues to pre-recorded tapes to controlled aleatorism, but that all of them show a deep-rooted, rock-solid, intensely spiritual, powerfully immense Chinese soul. (Listen here if you're interested, in Chinese though.) However, since it's already more than a decade since he virtually retired after his final symphony in 1999, with performances becoming scarcer, he is becoming another textbook symbol of rather than an active living legend. His fame in the West, if any, may be dwindling, too, since Alex Ross didn't mention him in The Rest is Noise.
That morning, Mr. Zhu came to have a few of his photos scanned and emailed. And in one of the photos I recognized Tikhon Khrennikov, who is supposed by many to have denounced and persecuted Shostakovich and others in 1948. I was kind of shocked to see the beloved old man sitting beside me in the same photo with a "Communist Devil." But reason immediately interceded: of course it was perfectly normal that back in the 1950s & early 60s Chinese composers who visited the USSR would take a photo together with the Head of the Union of Soviet Composers. So I excitedly pointed at Khrennikov and showed that I knew he was the Head of the Union of Soviet Composers. "Oh, you know about him." Mr. Zhu, calmly excited, commented in his frail voice (he's 89 anyway), "he was also a member of the Central Committee." And he pointed at another man in the photo: "this is Shchedrin." I didn't know Shchedrin was that handsome. There was no trace in Mr. Zhu's voice that showed he was aware of the popular trend that regards Khrennikov as a symbol of the evil, and I didn't ask. As the composer who wrote one of the first symphonic works that reflected (upon) and criticized the Cultural Revolution, he would surely understand if he knows this.
Mr. Zhu Jian-er, June 2011
*****
Chinese people never like to dig up cemented history. They would rather not talk about it and just move on as peacefully as possible. So different strands of history often run apart unnoticed and buried, until someone notices the connection and wonders at how it could be like that and gets shocked. As an archivist, such shocks come often and stir up all kinds of emotion in me. Some of them, such as Liu Shikun's collaboration with Kondrashin, show how the buried history could be brilliant and important, but people would rather bury them anyway. Others, such as Mr. Zhu's photo with Khrennikov, add to the bittersweetness one feels in the smiles that only shake it off.
BTW, Liu Shikun indeed plays very well in these recordings made in his early 20s.
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