Tags
Bach, Book Review, China, Ellen Hinsey (Translator), Mao Tse Tung, The Cultural Revolution, Zhu Xiao-Mei
Mao, Tao, Bach and a Piano
I’m embarrassed, as a lover of classical music, not to have heard of the classical pianist Zhu Xiao-Mei, until very recently, coming by chance across her wonderful autobiography, The Secret Piano. Perhaps, given her history which is a history of her country in the latter half of the twentieth century, this is not so surprising
Zhu Xiao Mei was born in 1949, to an artistic, bourgeois, intellectual family. From a very early age she showed an extraordinary musical aptitude. However, the possession of a piano in a family home was at this time yet another indication that the family was not ‘a good family’ Bourgeois, revisionist, not revolutionary.
She was however born just in time to have some years of training at China’s premier classical music college, before the launching of The Cultural Revolution in 1966 changed the lives of her generation. Bourgeois thought was to be rooted out. The young, impressionable to exploitation, something totalitarian regimes of left and right have capitalised on, became the vanguard of the Cultural Revolution, condemning any who showed individualist, critical thinking towards Mao Tse-Tung thought, as deified in The Little Red Book.
Intellectuals were sent to work camps for ‘Re-education’ This happened to every member of her family – sent to different camps. She spent 5 years in a workcamp, which seemed to have a remarkable similarity to some accounts of the gulags.
Her destiny, which had seemed, from her early prowess, to indicate a life as an exceptional concert pianist, was far from realisation. After Mao’s death, when a thaw in relationships between East and West began to happen, the flame that music was for her, could only express itself in lowly ways. She finally managed to complete her interrupted musical education, and began working as an accompanist for the training dancers at Beijing’s Dance Academy.
I often wonder whether I should hate Mao Tse-Tung for what he did to me. On a purely theoretical level, his analyses were not incorrect. The Chinese people did need to be liberated. How could I forget the documentary they screened for us at school,, which showed the sign the English erected at the entrance to Waitan Park. On it was clearly written “Dogs and Chinese Not Admitted”
She left China for America, determined to try and study her art further, and supported her studies by various jobs – some completely unconnected with her musicality, such as house-cleaning.
Things began to change for her in the eighties. She moved to Paris (where she still lives) and where her ability was recognised so that, as she continued with her studies, she was at least able to get work teaching the piano.
This book (beautifully translated by Ellen Hinsey) shows Zhu Xiao-Mei to be an exceptional human being, as well as musician. She has, of course, been scarred by the experience of the Cultural Revolution, where idealistic and impressionable young people were brainwashed into acts of betrayal because they believed they were acting in the common good. She does not spare herself from culpability. The experience has left her not quite able to trust. However……..she is a deeply reflective, modest, spiritual individual, and indeed, one of great generosity of heart and soul, great authenticity. SHE does not say these things of herself – but this listener found these qualities in her work
There is a poignant moment, on a plane, on her way to America where she learns, for the first time, about the philosophical and ethical inheritance of her country, as exemplified by Lao-tzu – of whom she had never heard, as all this was hidden, regarded as deviant and retrograde, when the doctrine of her country was the one religion of Mao Tse-Tung Thought.
Before playing a work…I need to be peaceful, to empty my mind.
The Chinese are well acquainted with this way of seeing things; they often use the image of water to illustrate it. To see down to the bottom of a lake, the water must be calm and still. The calmer the water, the farther down one can see. The exact same thing is true for the mind – the more tranquil and detached one is, the greater the depths one can plumb….it is precisely by following this path of self-effacement and emptiness that one attains the truth of a musical work. Without attempting to impose one’s will, without forcing something on the listener. Without struggling with the self. By disappearing behind the composer
Quotations and reflections from Lao-Tzu,and Confucius – and Jesus, clearly inform her way of being, and the Tao infuses her understanding and interpretation of Bach, in particular, whom she describes as the most Chinese of composers, the composer closest to comprehension and inhabitation by a Chinese person
Only now I am able to understand the extent to which my experience of the Cultural Revolution taught me to never use music’s power to impose anything on my audience. I suffered too much under the yoke of servitude, and I prefer to speak rather than to compel
This is a wonderful, moving, soulful book, very humbling to read.
Strongly recommended.
As are her handful of CDs. She clearly is an exceptionally gifted communicator using the language of words. What she does with the language of music is something else again
Lady Fancifull 
Beautiful review of what sounds like a quite inspiring work. I love the quote about the image of water, such a stirring thought gorgeously expressed. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you, bookbii. That sense of flow as strength permeates this book. It is indeed inspiring, and I can’t quite let myself surrender to another voice yet, either literary or musical, as the quiet integrity of Zhu Xiao-Mei still has things to say. I’m reading a factual book, with important things to say, but without the sense of a narrator who engages me, human to human. I can’t quite work out if it is a flaw in that book, or whether the great light of this one means the small light of that is dimmed right down. Mind you, the other is written by a journalist, and is an investigative story about third parties, so it’s very different from the kind of book The Secret Piano is, which illuminates the universal because it illuminates the personal so nakedly and openly, without sentimentality or self-indulgence
I love and loathe that feeling after reading something so stirring that almost nothing can break the spell. It’s a compelling feeling, coupled with frustration because you know it is rare and un-replicable. It sounds like this was an extraordinary read.
This sounds like an interesting and insightful account of a critical time in Chinese history. I feel drawn to Zhu Xiao-Mei’s telling of this story. Your review highlights and exemplifies her quiet, thoughtful nature. Unfortunately, this book is not in city library, and frustratingly, Kindle deals don’t apply to purchases made from NZ. I’ll have to ponder further as I’d like to read this book…
Oh I am so sorry to have awakened your interest in this wonderful book, when getting it is not so easy. I’m probably going to intensify the insult in the next few days or so by reviewing the CD, which I HAD to buy, after snacking on various short extracts of her playing in You Tube. She talks in this book, very interestingly about Goldberg and other pieces which are important for her, and I think further CDs will be making their way to me! I was lucky enough to find that buying the Goldberg CD have me 3 months free trial of Music Unlimited streaming. So I shall be doing a lot of listening to full album streaming, before buying some of my listening on CD. I do prefer the sound of the CD in my music system from the sound of streamed. Nice to have 3 free months of ‘auditioning’ some music. I shan’t want to buy the service when the trial runs out!
I used the ‘recommend a book for purchase’ function at our city library for The Secret Piano and I see it’s now in my Hold list so it must be on it’s way! I’m pleased to be able to read it and to open this opportunity to other library users. 🙂
Hurrah!
Sounds fascinating Lady F. I read a fair number of books about the cultural revolution era (Wild Swans and the like) back in the day, but not so much recently. And I’m terribly ignorant about classical music, although I like what I like – so any pointers to music and books are gratefully received! 😀
Yes, Wild Swans the big one on my shelves, but I also read another one, some years earlier, which was an account of time in a ‘reeducation camp’ Somewhat queasily I confess shedding tears when Mao died. China at one point seemed to the idealistic young on the left in the West somewhat like Russia had seemed to an earlier generation. And, for sure, attempts to deceive and indoctrinate happen all across the political spectrum at its far edges. The desire for liberty, equality, fraternity (which Is, I still feel a right one) is however easily subverted by ‘the ends justifies the means’ thinking. And people become the broken eggs in making the omelette, so to speak. There are perhaps remarkably few who have the power to cohere the people who are not, also, people with a belief in their own rightness that borders on psychopathy. Back in the day, in some of the left groups I was around/within, the ‘bad tales’ about China were seen as capitalist propaganda. It was that earlier prison book (somebody called Bao something I think) which made me think that this seemed remarkably like stories of what life had been like in the gulags.
Anyway, on a much happier note, Goldberg Variations are a piece of music I could not live without. I’m thinking about the qualities of the Glenn Gould, which seems to have been with me for ever, and, now of Zhu
Xiou-Mei’s and they are both magnificent in their very very different ways. A review will bubble up in due course, I think!
Excellent! I’ll look forward to your musical review.
As for revolution and the left, all you say kind of chimes in with what I’m reading in the Mark Steel. He often takes sideswipes at modern stuff, making comparisons between the modern left and revolutionary Parisian types. Whether it’s the Gulags or the Terror or the Cultural Revolution, there always seem to be people who want to be in charge and inflict pain, and those who make excuses for them…
Sounds like a fascinating story. It brings to mind a Canadian novel that I read a couple of years ago, “Do Not Say We Have Nothing”. Thanks for bringing this book to my attention!
I must check that one out!
Oh my. She’s marvelous! Another one to add to the pile. I fear that your return to reviewing will be my undoing!
But think of the pleasure as you embark on each tempting delight!
Heh Heh…rushes to mirror to practice tempting moue over the top of a cocktail glass. Damn! the fluttery false eyelashes fell into the glass……
I enjoyed this book….quite an inspiration. I often listen to her playing the goldberg variations
Wonderful interpretation, isn’t it
Yes it is. You can hear something of the story in the performance I think. Though that may be my imagination!
I DO think that is the powerful place (‘my imagination’) which art arising from authentic place – composer/performer/interpreter – must reach, for the listener/receiver. Bach was a complex human being, of his life and time, Zhu Xiao-Mei is a complex human being of her life and time, and so are we, the listeners, with our own life and time. So many stories are wrapped inside this, and the story each of us hears will be slightly different.
‘Imagination’ is a powerful attribute. I’m not sure it is something ONLY human beings have, but it is certainly developed in humans – and without it, none of our human achievements would have been possible, for good, or for ill. If Bach’s imagination had not heard this music arising, if Zhu Xiao-Mei had not responded in her way, and had her ‘imagine’ activated……and then each of us, listening, receiving our part of their stories.
I went to a very enjoyable piano recital last week, and we, the audience were having a pleasant time…and then, ‘something happened’ for all of us, which could be felt in the hall, for interpreter, for the individual listeners, and for us collectively, with the final collection of pieces – Chopin. Music of a different, more intense and total place, from the composer, the pianist playing ‘inspired’ – and something immediately different in the quality of listening, in the room. It was total. And quite clearly powerfully touching a collective ‘my imagination’, though maybe each of us, if questioned, would have used different words to conceptualise.
I am SO grateful to composers, to interpreters – and to the collective ‘us’ who might gather in a concert hall!
Yes sometimes an audience can share something uniquely individual….which sounds like a paradox but is not!
Thank you for this wonderfully written review. I had not heard of Zhu Xiao-Mei either, but now I both want to read her autobiography and hear more of her music.
And thank you for your kind comment
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Apart from the very inspiring book, there is this excellent rendition of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Until recently, there were only two standards for me: the inevitable 1955 registration of Glenn Gould and the 2012 video registration from the underestimated Yevgeny Koroliov. Frankly speaking, and to my shame, I never heard of Zhu Xiao-Mei before noticing her book. Now, after hearing her version of the Goldberg Variations (2014, Thomaskirche, Leipzig) I cannot do but adding it to my favourites. I only can advise all of you: don’t just read the book, but also find this registration and listen to it twice: first looking at the serenity of Zhu Xiao-Mei while playing, then again with your eyes closed. After that, you will feel hope for humanity flowing through your veins…