On a Wing and a Scissors

By Martha Duffy

The Boston Symphony winds up its triumphal tour of China

When Conductor Seiji Ozawa arrived at the Peking Conservatory last week, he might as well have been John Travolta. His car was rocked back and forth by a clamoring crowd, and he was propelled into the building by the momentum of his admirers. If the Boston Symphony Orchestra's eight-day tour of China began triumphantly in Shanghai, it ended with the conquest of Peking.

There were three concerts, all televised nationally. At the first, there was a row of armchairs with snowy antimacassars and little tables set for tea. The occupants turned out to be top members of the Chinese Establishment: Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping (Teng Hsiao-p'ing), Foreign Minister Huang Hua, Vice Premier Fang Yi and Mme. Sun Yatsen, who is in her late 80s. During the intermission, Deng held a reception at which he said in effect that he did not know much about music but he knew what he liked: anything that promoted friendship. After the concert, he led his tea party to the stage and shook hands with orchestra members.

Ozawa showed considerable craft in selecting his programs. The Chinese love the violin, so there were two concertos, the Mozart Fifth in A Major and the Mendelssohn. Concertmaster Joseph Silverstein was the delicate, meticulous soloist in both. The Boston also used two Chinese virtuosos. Liu Dehai played a concerto for a lutelike instrument called the pipa. In the solos he all but turned into Orpheus.

The other was Pianist Liu Shikun, who performed the Liszt Concerto No. 1 in E-flat. The two Lius were startlingly different in temperament. The pipa player is a genial fellow who entertained the Boston members backstage with Home on the Range ("I learned it for Kissinger's sixth visit"). The pianist, who spent most of the Gang of Four reign in jail, is a man of seething intensity. He came onstage with shaking hands, and shot through the Liszt with authority but blinding speed. At rehearsal, Ozawa had tried without success to slow Liu down. Finally, he said, "We shall try to support you." Just barely, the orchestra succeeded. The pianist defended his interpretation. Said he: "Liszt used technique to express himself, so I use it to immortalize him."

Most Boston players did not admire the performance. It brought into focus their criticism of Chinese musicianship: the inability to sustain rhythm and tempo over a long stretch. "You must maintain control if the excitement and beauty are to come out of the music itself," says Violinist Marylou Speaker, whose gift to the Peking Central Philharmonic was a metronome. "You sometimes hear amateur groups rushing the pace at home. The tendency is to tense up in a tough passage. When things got hard, Liu took off and was out of context with the music." Ozawa dealt with the same problem in working with the Peking Philharmonic. "Chinese musicians are sensitive and brilliant," he says. "But the steadiness of rhythm, the kind of repetition and restatement of theme that makes Western music exciting, is difficult for them. They keep going faster and do not hold the ends of phrases long enough." He adds, "It may have some relation to their language: there are characters instead of running sentences."

It is a problem that will be solved only when musicians can hear more Western ensembles and study with teachers trained in a different idiom. For now, China's artistic world is celebrating the fall of the Gang of Four. Pipa Player Liu has a lively repertoire again; during the cultural crackdown, he played in the Peking Philharmonic, which could perform exactly nine works.

Nowhere is the new freedom more appreciated than in ballet. A whole generation of dancers was lost as schools were closed. Mao's wife Jiang Qing (Chiang Ch'ing) decided that she just did not like two steps basic to the dance vocabulary, the entrechat and the pas de basque. So she had them excised, which was akin to taking the verb out of sentences. Now the ballet classes are filled again, and a classical ballet performance is the hottest ticket in China.

All is not completely open in the new China. Working on the joint concert, members of the Boston and Peking orchestras got to know each other. Violinist Speaker had become friendly with her opposite number, and at a banquet the women began exchanging stories about their domestic lives and families. Then a man came up to the table and touched the Chinese player on the shoulder. It was a gentle warning, and she fell silent.

The joint concert was held in the 18,000-seat Capital Stadium. Ozawa was in ebullient humor and under no illusions about producing musical ecstasy in such a setting. Said he: "It's like swimming in the ocean after you have been swimming at the Y." The audience was in a jolly, responsive mood. Cellist Martin Hoherman brought down the house during an encore by playing a few phrases on the banhu, a Chinese instrument with two parallel strings, played by bowing between them. Hoherman was glad when his chore was over: "That technique is like drilling. A dentist should do it."

The last number was The Stars and Stripes Forever, and that seemed just fine with the Chinese. Then Ozawa circled the oval floor along with his mother and an ever growing parade of musicians. Next morning almost the whole Peking Philharmonic showed up at the airport to say goodbye with gifts and mementos. Several private farewells ended in tears. Ozawa led his troops onto the 747. The final glimpse of the Americans must have made the Peking players smile. Pan Am printed the name CHINA CLIPPER on the sides in Chinese characters but, language misunderstandings being what they are, the sign read CHINA SCISSORS.

-- Martha Duffy

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