Piano-mania in China

A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants.
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Apollonius
Posts: 1065
Joined: Tue Dec 13, 2011 5:32 pm

Piano-mania in China

Post by Apollonius »

David P. Goldman has written about this phenomenon several times:


Why piano-mania grips China’s children - Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore, BBC News, 22 October 2013
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/201310 ... rips-china


Keng Zhou holds a prestigious position as dean of the International Piano Academy at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. But he first learnt to play in 1973 not on a gleaming grand piano but on an instrument’s battered remains. The legs had been sawn off for fuel and its cover removed to create a makeshift table. For years in Mao’s China, Western classical music was viewed suspiciously as a tool of imperialism and the piano a despised instrument of the bourgeoisie.
Like many intellectuals of the era, Keng’s father – a pastor who was given his piano by an American – was sent to the countryside to perform back-breaking work with the peasants. When he returned to the city he wanted to bring music back into his children’s lives. “My father said it is better to learn one instrument: my sister took vocal lessons, my father took violin lessons, and I took the piano,” remembers Keng, now 51. There was just one problem: during the Cultural Revolution many Western scores had been destroyed. Unperturbed, Keng’s father borrowed some surviving sheets from a friend. “He copied them by hand – one piece took him a week to do.”

Four decades later and times have changed. Today China is experiencing piano frenzy with an estimated 40m children now learning to play. The instrument is increasingly in vogue among China’s burgeoning middle classes, who have the money to splurge on steep lessons and expensive fixtures. Spurring them on is the phenomenal success of the Chinese superstar concert pianists Lang Lang and Li Yundi, the latter of whom is currently on a 30-city sell-out tour of his homeland. Tickets for the Beijing leg were snapped up within minutes. “So many parents say: ‘I didn’t have a chance to play but my kids need to play piano,’” observes Keng. “Now it is easier for people – now you just need to be able to afford it.”

[...]

"... Before [parents] wanted their kids to become Lang Lang or Yundi, to become a superstar. Parents have started to change this idea. Now they want their kids to just know classical music and to have the piano accompany their whole life. I hope more and more kids can love to play from their hearts.”
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NapLajoieonSteroids
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Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2011 7:04 pm

Re: Piano-mania in China

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

Apollonius wrote:David P. Goldman has written about this phenomenon several times:


Why piano-mania grips China’s children - Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore, BBC News, 22 October 2013
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/201310 ... rips-china


Keng Zhou holds a prestigious position as dean of the International Piano Academy at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. But he first learnt to play in 1973 not on a gleaming grand piano but on an instrument’s battered remains. The legs had been sawn off for fuel and its cover removed to create a makeshift table. For years in Mao’s China, Western classical music was viewed suspiciously as a tool of imperialism and the piano a despised instrument of the bourgeoisie.
Like many intellectuals of the era, Keng’s father – a pastor who was given his piano by an American – was sent to the countryside to perform back-breaking work with the peasants. When he returned to the city he wanted to bring music back into his children’s lives. “My father said it is better to learn one instrument: my sister took vocal lessons, my father took violin lessons, and I took the piano,” remembers Keng, now 51. There was just one problem: during the Cultural Revolution many Western scores had been destroyed. Unperturbed, Keng’s father borrowed some surviving sheets from a friend. “He copied them by hand – one piece took him a week to do.”

Four decades later and times have changed. Today China is experiencing piano frenzy with an estimated 40m children now learning to play. The instrument is increasingly in vogue among China’s burgeoning middle classes, who have the money to splurge on steep lessons and expensive fixtures. Spurring them on is the phenomenal success of the Chinese superstar concert pianists Lang Lang and Li Yundi, the latter of whom is currently on a 30-city sell-out tour of his homeland. Tickets for the Beijing leg were snapped up within minutes. “So many parents say: ‘I didn’t have a chance to play but my kids need to play piano,’” observes Keng. “Now it is easier for people – now you just need to be able to afford it.”

[...]

"... Before [parents] wanted their kids to become Lang Lang or Yundi, to become a superstar. Parents have started to change this idea. Now they want their kids to just know classical music and to have the piano accompany their whole life. I hope more and more kids can love to play from their hearts.”
Very interesting; but what of traditional Chinese music?
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