In Mao’s China, pianos were destroyed
as despised symbols of the bourgeoisie – but now an estimated 40m
children are learning the instrument. What has changed? Clarissa
Sebag-Montefiore investigates.
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.”
While the European market for pianos is
shrinking, China’s is booming. It is now both the world’s largest
piano producer and consumer, with the country accounting for 76.9% of
the global piano output in 2012 alone, according to market analysts
ResearchMoz. But China is not just making pianos. It is also buying
them. For many owning a Steinway, the Rolls-Royce of pianos, is a
status symbol. Displaying a grand piano in the living room projects
not only culture and learning but also wealth: only the largest homes
can accommodate them. Prices can also veer into the extreme. Last
year a commemorative edition Steinway grand piano, named Charm of the
Dragon, sold for 6.9m RMB ($1.1m). “I have seen show homes with
grand white pianos,” says Wray Armstrong, CEO of the Beijing-based
Armstrong International Music and Arts Enterprises Ltd. “It
certainly looks good [but] it was strictly for show.”
Keys to success
At the Shanghai Conservatory of Music,
where tuition costs per year run into the tens of thousands of
Renminbi, classical music wafts down the corridor on a balmy autumn
evening. It is seven in the evening on a weekday but most of the
practice rooms are full. Wang Ming Gang, a shy 21-year-old student,
practices the piano here for up to four hours every day. With a
businessman father and a mother who works in the civil service,
Wang’s parents are wealthy enough to help support his dream of
becoming a musician.
Originally from eastern Shandong
province, Wang’s parents sent him to Shanghai because it is seen as
both a financial and cultural centre. He considers himself lucky. “My
friends from my hometown will not choose to study piano,” says
Wang. “It is very expensive. Economic pressure is key. Another
reason is that playing piano is not easy – it is not like you study
two or three years and you become famous. My parents didn’t give me
any pressure, this road is my own choice.”
That is not the case for Su Fan, a
25-year-old postgraduate piano student from the southern boomtown of
Guangzhou who has been playing for over a decade. “My parents
encouraged me to study because the piano was a dream of my mother
since she was very young. But she didn’t have the chance to study,”
says Su, speaking at the Conservatory. “My grandfather forced his
daughter to study science. At that time people thought that by
learning science you could get a good job.”
Su, who sports a gelled fringe, square
hipster glasses, and a pink T-shirt, has ambitions to be a piano
teacher. It is, he admits, “not a wealthy job”. But he wants to
further the pursuit of the piano in China: “I want to teach more
students to know the piano. To spread my musical dreams and ideas.”
To facilitate this Su works part time as a teacher, where he charges
students up to 300RMB ($49) for 45 minutes. Over the past seven years
he has seen an explosion in the number of students he tutors: from
just a couple when he started to more than 30 per week today. He now
has so many he often turns them away.
Practice makes perfect?
Despite this, Su believes the piano is
far from established. “Most of the students are from wealthy or
middle-class families. Even though China has progressed economically,
most families [still] only think about the high price of rice, the
high price of social welfare,” he muses. “It needs generations of
hard work. Quality development needs accumulation. It cannot happen
overnight.”
“The piano might have been seen by
many as a route out, as a way to college, as a way to the US, even as
a way to get to Beijing from the countryside. As a way to a better
place in society,” Armstrong adds. Success stories such as Lang
Lang’s have proved an inspiration for pushy parents keen to add to
their children’s resume. The piano prodigy learnt to play while
living in relative poverty in Beijing; he grew up in a rented room,
sharing a toilet and sink with five other families. Today Lang Lang
has an international rock’n’roll lifestyle and has performed for
dignitaries including President Obama at the White House.
In spite of its popularity other
challenges for the piano persist. Scandals involving bribery and
corruption have plagued some of China’s conservatories of music.
Demand is also growing too fast with many less accomplished teachers
unable to keep up, according to Keng. And critics of China’s
teaching methods say they place too much emphasis on rote learning
with little room for creativity. “The Chinese want to force their
kids to practice piano,” says Keng. “It is too old a method. It
needs to be more about enjoying playing the piano. For most students
it will kill your hobby and kill your enjoyment.”
Still, Keng believes that classical
music in China has come a long way from when he was a child learning
keys on a broken piano. “I think it is a very great, very bright
future. 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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