Stevens Hewitt of the Philadelphia Orchestra gives some insights into musical life (and oboe-playing in particular) in China based on the Philadelphia Orchestra's visit to the People's Republic of China in 1973, the first by an American orchestra.
The great solidity of achievement of the Chinese is not immediately evident, as compared to the progress of the aggressively westernized Japanese. Five symphony orchestras in Tokyo, scores of little Suzuki children playing Vivaldi on Suzuki violins . . . such Japanese accomplishments have been eye-opening to many westerners. The Chinese musical position is not so easily assessed by us, as it stems more from the Chinese classical past.
Some of the performers we heard - and they tried to let us hear a little of all the best they could offer - were great artists by any standard. The er-hu (Chinese violin) soloist evoked, in the mind's eye, a Kreisler. She was a charming young girl of 26, married to a dancer in the Shanghai Ballet, with one little girl. (In contemporary China it seems that one gets married at or about 26 years of age, has two children, and that is it.) The women players of the Chinese classical instruments might tend to wear a brocade blouse and black skirt as a sop to the past. With the other performers, there was the ubiquitous unisex grey or blue Mao jacket and pants.
The sheng player was another great artist. The sheng is a "bundle of sticks" tied together over a metal or lacquer pan, blown into like a harmonica and fingered as if you were holding a vase with holes in it. Our organ sounds like an implacable mechanical monster compared with this man's amazingly colored performance on the sheng.
If you were a pianist, wouldn't it be nice to have a method by Pythagoras, or articles on 16 Types of Touch (light, crisp, gliding, loose, empty, etc.) by Josquin des Pres? The chin (Chinese "zither") player is in the enviable position of having this kind of background. Added to this is the fact that a "Committee of the People's Republic of China" has chromaticized the instrument to be in line with modern demands. (In China, everything is carried out by a "Committee.") This is probably quite a shock, as the instrument has been all right up till now - only minor variations for about 2,000 years.
The chin player's western "counterpart," the pianist played the "Yellow River Concerto" (composed by Committee) with us. He was of the first rank by any country's standards.
The classical Chinese oboists are about as subtle as a flame thrower at a church picnic, and can be just as thrilling. We Westerners lost a great deal by inventing valves for the brass instruments, thus enabling them to take over and relegate the oboe to a much gentler, prissier role.
The wind instruments come in sets, since they have no keys. The smallest oboe I saw was in D, a tone above the piccolo. From there they run down to C, our oboe length. (The one in C has a couple of keys.) The main soloist seems to use from G up. Our pitch instrument holds more of a viola type position. The instruments are made of wood, with brass trumpet bells, have a mashed flat soda-straw type reed with wire wrapped around where it fits on the tube, and have a little plastic button to push your lips against. You blow as hard as you feel like. The one I bought is of the B natural persuasion and, particularly in the upper register, I believe it will kill at anything less than two paces!
Since the bore flares more than ours, all kinds of glisses are possible, and used, at which point the musical logic of a passage may escape you and a strong impression of cat fight may set in, to be dispelled only when the flute player echoes the passage exactly or you hear exactly the same thing being played along an octave below.
The obstreperous oboes can be supported by a much more colorful set of percussion instruments than the other groups. They have sets of "doink" type gongs that, after they are hit, gliss up to pitch and hold there, which I found to be a pretty wild effect.
An oboe solo (on a piccolo C oboe) in "One Hundred Birds Answer the Phoenix" was played for us at the Summer Palace at Peking. It was spectacular. The oboist received an ovation that, for our orchestra, must have been like applauding an electric shock.
The Peking Orchestra gave us a cased set of three of these oboes.
Their western music shows a heavy German-Russian influence and not much western music is played at all. According to their philosophy, music that is not understood by the people is not music. The People's Committee of the Republic of China is busy composing what is required.
We saw the ballet "The White-Haired Girl," which is a synthesis of the old and new (Peking Opera, German music, Russian ballet, Sayings of Chairman Mao). The mixture works very well. It would be a smash in the States if one could ignore the Red-Ideology Plot in the same way one ignores a nonsensical Verdi libretto.
The chorus we heard was first rate. "My Country 'Tis of Thee" could never be heard more expressively or lucidly than as sung by these non-English speaking Chinese.
The string players have had the influence of fine teachers - emigre Russians, etc.
The first oboe of the Peking Philharmonic plays a lucite East German Moennig ring system oboe and uses a German short scrape reed. I left him with a half dozen of my reeds and a page full of cryptic diagrams on how I balance reeds . . . but how does one make pictures of a wine taster's equipment? . . . with his tongue stuck out? In any case, I hope the diagrams are helpful. He gave me some of his tube cane, a batch from Anhwei and one from Hopei. If I understood him correctly, he has to go there himself to collect it. One batch is pretty good. It would be tragic if it were excellent and I were compelled, by the oboist's mania, to go through the impenetrable difficulties of getting more!
All the members of the Philharmonic live in six apartment houses for a rent of a couple of dollars a month. If one's wife is a medical technician, for example, one has a choice of living in either apartment complex. They have their own doctor who knows musicians' ailments. Parenthetically, quite a few Philadelphia musicians took acupuncture treatments and are continuing the treatments in Washington, D.C., when we have our concert series there. Full medical coverage costs 60¢ a year. Mother and father work, and there is a nursery school for the children.
The Children's Palace in Shanghai is an enlightening experience for those who are expecting what would be a western parallel, the "Y". It is for after school, where a child can take up whatever he wishes, ship model building, gymnastics, ping pong, embroidery, music. The depth of achievement of each little boy or girl is frightening. One hears, with pleasure, little violinists or er-hu players or pianists playing pieces by heart, together. The pianists have one piano at school and practice at home on a piece of paper with the keyboard printed on it. I have never heard kids play better. As a finale, in the assembly, they performed a full ballet, costumes, lights, music, choreography, and Uplifting Plot, which puts our ZOOM television show to abject shame.
In many ways the Chinese have thrown out their past, thrown out the baby with the bath water. They consider the bath water to have poisoned the baby somehow. But I think the good will survive and thrive to the point where our grandchildren will be learning Chinese as a second language - if not, there may not be any grandchildren. It is not that the Chinese seem aggressive. On the contrary, the classical Chinese propensity towards the building of Great Walls and systems of tunnels is a formidable quality in the service of a patient people.