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发表于 2005-8-1 19:02:06
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XUEFEI YANG
Interviewed by MACER HALL
XUEFEI Yang is fast becoming one of the classical guitar's brightest young stars. Born in Beijing, she began playing at seven years old before studying with the famous Chinese guitar teacher Zhi Chen from the age of ten. Four years later, she performed in front of an audience that included the composer Rodrigo. She has been something of a pioneer for the instrument in her country, becoming the first guitarist to graduate any of China's conservatories.
Yang has won an impressive series of competition prizes. In 1989, she won a special prize at the 32nd Tokyo International Guitar Contest and was given a guitar by the Japanese maker Masaru Kohno. John Williams has paid a similar compliment; he gave her his own Smallman guitar after hearing her play for the first time. Later, she won a scholarship from the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music to study at London's Royal Academy of Music. She also won the third Ivor Mairants Guitar Award organised by the Worshipful Company of Musicians in London. Having completed her stud­ies, she is fast building an international concert.
Her second CD is due to be released later this year. When I met her recently in London, we began by discussing the recording.
Tell me about your new CD. What's it called?
It has a Chinese name, Si Ji. It is named after a piece that Thierry Rougier wrote for me. In English the name means four seasons. It's a lovely piece; the producer and I both like it very much. And also I hope this disc will leave listeners with colourful, varied impressions, just like the four seasons of the year.
And it's on GSP. Is that the same label as your first CD?
No, my first CD was released in China on the Shine Horn label five years ago.
What sort of repertoire is featured on the new one?
It's a very interesting album. I think I am the first guitarist to attempt this sort of music. The whole repertoire relates to China. GSP doesn't like to do the usual repertoire; the label always wants new things. So we talked about recording oriental or Chinese repertoire because I had transcribed a piece from a traditional Chinese instrument called the pipa and the producer, Dean Kamei, heard it and liked it very much. The pipa is a plucked instrument sometimes called the Chinese lute. Dean wanted me to record a whole CD of similar transcriptions and arrangements. I thought that was a great idea, but would take a huge amount of time to do all the transcriptions. So we encouraged various composers to write pieces inspired by Chinese stories or instruments or anything relating to Chinese culture. We received many compositions and we had to eliminate some quite good pieces. There is a great deal of variety. For example, Steve Goss, the English composer, wrote a piece for me that I premiered at the Wigmore Hall, called Raise the Red Lantern. It was inspired by several famous Chinese films. Gerald Garcia did a few nice folk song arrangements, and Carlo Domeniconi wrote a piece for me inspired by the I Ching, the famous Chinese book of philosophy. Another piece, written for me by Even Hirschelmnan, is based on new age musical ideas. Dietmar Ungenrank wrote a piece inspired by Chinese paintings. And there is a piece for prepared guitar by the American composer Steve Funk Pearson. This piece sounds a bit like the koto. I think there is a lot of interesting and varied material on this CD.
I've heard of a prepared piano but never a prepared guitar.
You put another nut in the middle of the fingerboard so you have two different tunings. You can play both parts and have two distinct sounds.
How well do you think the classical guitar accom­modates Chinese and other oriental music?
In China we have a lot of plucked instruments so I feel that I could adapt lots of things from those to the guitar. Also, the guitar is from Moorish beginnings so I think this instrument suits oriental music very well. Being a Chinese guitarist myself, I feel that I am committed to do something to bring culture from my country into the instru­ment. It also helps to give me my own distinctive approach. This CD includes two of my own transcriptions and I'm definitely going to do more transcriptions in future. When I play pieces like Yi Dance in the west, audiences love it because it sounds so unusual and different from mainstream western music. Also, I feel that the guitar itself is mainly a western instrument so I would like to bring some Chinese element to it.
Have you tried playing this sort of repertoire in China? How well does it go down?
I've played some and Chinese audience loves them, they feel very homely when they hear them. People always respond to their own culture spontaneously. A typical reaction is: ‘Oh, it sounds so Chinese!’
So we could create lots more new repertoire for our instrument based on Chinese music.
It is my first attempt at approaching repertoire related to China. I want to do it even more in the future. I hope to encourage more mainstream composers to write pieces for me. In the BBC Proms last year, they featured the Chinese composers Tan Dun, Zhou Long, Bright Sheng, and Chen Yi. I think one of the reasons why these composers are successful is that there is strong Chinese influence in their music. Everybody knows that we guitarists have a narrow repertoire. So I think every guitarist is committed to make contribution in enlarging the repertoire.
Do you generally use conventional tunings in these pieces?
On this new CD, several pieces use different tunings. One piece has a tuning based on F-sharp, another one based on G-sharp. Domeniconi often uses unusual tunings; in I Ching he retunes the two bass strings to accommodate the Chinese pentatonic scale.
Are you programming these pieces in your concert repertoire now?
I am going to do a couple in each concert over this year and I hope to add more in the future.
Do you enjoy recording?
Yes, I do. Lots of performers seem to prefer live performance. Recording in a studio is very different from playing live. I enjoy both. It's hard to say which one I enjoy more. On the stage you are communicating with the audience and can feel the immediate response and you don't need to worry about little noises from the chair or wherever. But some very introverted pieces don't work well in a huge concert hall; the slow and quiet parts don't sustain and project enough. But playing such a piece in a studio, however, is no problem. It's completely quiet and you can totally concentrate and feel deep inside the music. It's a similar experience to practising at home at night. You are indulged playing for yourself; you don't need to worry about projection nor audience. In addition, you can only play once on stage, whether it's good or bad, but you can play until you are satisfied in the studio. Some repertoire, like the Ginastera Sonata, I definitely prefer playing live. Those pieces are really for live performance, the live atmosphere and performance is important to this piece.
Ginastera's Sonata is a piece you particularly like, isn't it?
Oh, I love it. I feel this piece can give me a lot of room to express my guitar. But when I first heard it, I didn't understand it. Then I grew to love it as I learned it. I know a lot of professional guitarists felt the same about this piece, and Britten's Nocturnal as well. For the audience, it could be their first experience of the piece. So it's a great challenge for us performers to get the piece across. In my experience, people like it very much.
Is there a part of the guitar repertoire that you enjoy playing most?
I'm quite open minded and have vast musical interests. If I had to make a choice, I do feel particularly comfortable playing romantic music. It goes back to when I was very young in China and hadn't learned much of how to analyse music nor the related background, I just played music spontaneously and romantic period music works that way. I love everything: contemporary, baroque, renaissance, Latin American, folkloric. I like all kinds of things. It's important for an artist to have an open mind. Unlike pianists, guitarists don't have a vast mainstream repertoire, so we need to be open minded and diverse.
How do you approach programming for a recital?
It is something I am quite flexible about. I think it is the difference that marks out a professional musician. You also have a mission to give people enjoyment. Of course, you have to play for yourself too; you can't just flatter the audience. While I have to feel happy with what I'm playing, the audience pays money and I must think what they would like. So I look to find a balance. Normally, when I accept a concert, I would ask what sort of audience is expected. I would also ask about the hall and the acoustics and think about a programme that would suit those conditions. For example, I wouldn't play Britten's Nocturnal in a hall with dry acoustic. If I play for the general audience maybe I would play more popular repertoire, but I wouldn't completely play popular repertoire because I would like people to build up their level of music listening.
You've been involved in something called the Night of the Proms tour. What was that?
That was one of the most unusual things I've done so far. The idea came from the BBC Proms that were first founded in order to draw new audiences to classical music. It's a series of concerts with a "pop meets classical" theme. There was a classical orchestra playing with rock and roll groups and pop singers, such as Toto and Huey Lewis from the America. I was performing as the only classical soloist. At the beginning I was a bit nervous, because it was so different from what I do normally.
And some of your friends advised you against doing it, didn't they?
Yes, and some even joked that I was going to turn into Vanessa Mae. No thank you, that's not for me! I still played classical repertoire on a classical guitar, not an electric. The audiences were huge; we had 15,000 people to each show. So it was a great chance to promote my music and my instrument to so many people. It was really unbelievable. We performed 54 shows in Belgium, Holland and Germany, including 23 shows in Antwerp alone. Antwerp is not a big city. The concert series had already been going on for 19 years. You can see how popular the concerts are. Some shows are sold out a year ahead. I played Asturias solo, the second movement of the Concierto de Aranjuez with the orchestra and a solo with the singer John Miles. When I played the solo on a platform specially constructed for me in the middle of the audience, I felt like a pop star. I was surrounded by security men to protect me as I walked through the audience to the platform in the dark. The audience was electrified when they saw me playing so close to them, screaming and waving to me. In this tour, I also got the opportunity to get to know non classical musicians, and they are interesting people. The entire tour was so well organised. It was quite an experience.
What sort of response did you get from those audiences?
To be honest, when I was rehearsing I was a little bit concerned. I was worried that the rock and roll was exuberant, the audience was noisy, and my music was relatively quiet and too intimate for a huge stadium. But my guitar was amplified, and the contrast with the rest of the music worked well. One newspaper review described the Aranjuez as sounding dream like. When I played Asturias they suddenly lit up hundreds of little lights followed the rhythm. Lots of people sent me email and said they were moved by my music. I feel very rewarded that many people who came to the show for rock music appreciated my performance. Perhaps they'd never listen to classical guitar before, but then got this chance to listen to me and they want to hear more. I think that's good for me, and also for the instrument.
What projects have you got coming up?
I am going on a concert tour in Asia from February through April. I will be touring with the English Chamber Orchestra in September. In 2006 I will be touring with the Northern Sinfonia orchestra to play the Simon Bainbridge concerto for guitar and the Aranjuez. Apart from many other concerts, hopefully I will start my third album this year.
Is there a big interest in Western classical music in Asia and China?
Oh yes, in Asia and China in particular it's very fashionable to learn Western arts these days. At the same time I would like to see China's own arts and cultural traditions develop. The country is going through a necessary stage that the people are in danger of losing their own traditional culture. When I studied in the Central Conservatoire, there were few opportunities for Chinese instrumentalists. It is the piano, the violin and so on that are considered high class. For me, the good thing is that the guitar is an instrument that is popular anywhere in the world.
How popular is the classical guitar in China?
In terms of classical music, guitar is far less popular than piano. But its reputation is developing gradually. During the Cultural Revolution up to 1976, everything stopped. People were forbidden to learn classical music. The guitar was regarded as a hooligan instrument. It has taken a long time for musical education to recover, let alone the guitar.
Western classical music was banned under Mao Zedong, was it?
That's right. So the guitar really only started after the Cultural Revolution. When China started to open up to the West, the instrument took off. By the middle of the 1980s there were an estimated 20 million people learning the guitar. As beginners, they were playing a mixture of everything. Now, there is thought to be around 10 million people who learn the guitar in China. In universities, probably half of all students at least try to learn the guitar for a while. I heard from some business people that around 100,000 guitars, including electric, are sold every month in China. Over 60 per cent of the guitars in the world are now made in China. So you can imagine, there's a huge interest in the guitar in China.
What was it like being a classical guitar student at the conservatoire in Beijing?
I was the very first guitarist to enter a music school and the first one to graduate with BA from a conservatoire in China. I felt the only way for me to become a professional musician was to enter the conservatoire to get the formal training. As the first guitarist in the conservatoire, it was an incredible experience. I felt isolated. The other students had a long tradition of training, playing chamber music together, joining the orchestra and I was just practicing by myself. To them, I was like some kind of freak. Even after I had been there for ten years, I still surprised some people when I told them my principle study is guitar. I felt very frustrated because even professional musicians in China saw the guitar as a street instrument, not serious enough and not difficult to learn. But that really pushed me to want to prove how beautiful the instrument is. I wanted to show them it was a very serious instrument. It made me stronger in a way.
Are many more coming through now?
Yes, more and more, the policy has now changed. Before, once you entered the conservatoire you were seen as a professional musician; the government would arrange a job for the students when they graduate. Violinists can work in an orchestra and pianists can become accompanist or teachers. But there was no job like that available for guitarists so it was not possible to set up a guitar faculty, I entered the conservatoire as an unofficial, self-paid student at the beginning, so that my parents were very reluctant to put me into the conservatoire, I had a huge fight with them. They were both teachers. They couldn't see any future in being a classical guitarist. Now when I look back, I totally understand their feelings. If I was parent, I would have felt the same, it was such a risk.
So how had you started off playing? Why did you choose the guitar?
It was a coincidence. I now look back and feel that it was not me who chose the guitar; the instrument chose me. There were no musicians in my family at all; I didn't have a clue what a guitar was at that time. I still remember when my father got me my first little guitar for three US dollars. That was the first time that I had ever seen the instrument.
You were about seven when you started. Were you listening to music at all at that time?
My father loves music and played a Chinese instrument as an amateur. My whole family loved listening to Chinese folk music. I was a very active child and my mother wanted me to be less hyperactive. She thought learning an instrument would be good for me. So she spoke to the music teacher in my primary school. She wanted me to learn the accordion with her because that instrument was very popular in those days. The teacher was versatile and loved the guitar. She was organising a guitar group in my school. I was really too young, but she let me in. Then they found that I learned the guitar really quickly and was the best player in the group. At that early stage, I was playing a mixture of classical and folk. I felt it was fun and felt rewarded I was the best player. As teachers themselves, my parents were keen to ensure that I kept going once I had started to learn something.
However, they never thought about me becoming a musician. When I was nine years old I played for an American guitarist Christopher Ashby, in a masterclass in a hall with 2,000 people. He said: "You are very talented. With a good teacher, you can become a first class guitarist". It was the first time that becoming a professional guitarist entered my mind. But at that time I was still using non nylon strings and had no nails. Next year I attended the First China International Guitar Festival, as the only child, I was treated like a prodigy, and the Spanish Ambassador presented me with a Spanish guitar afterwards.
Weren't you nervous?
People said I was too young to know what nervous was, but in fact I was nervous. At the same time, I really enjoyed the experience of performing in front of lots of people.
Have your parents changed their minds about the classical guitar now?
Yes, but they are still a bit worried. As a musician you can be fine one year but not sure about next year. I thought in Europe the classical guitar must be really well recognised but actually it wasn't as I imagined. I feel rewarded when I play a concert and members of the audience come to me and say things like: ‘I never knew the guitar could be so beautiful.’ That's when I realise all the hard work is really worth it.
What are the audiences for classical guitar concerts like in China now?
It is not as big as that for piano or orchestral concerts. There are many guitar societies and they organise concerts. There have been some big con­certs held in China. Famous guitarists like John Williams, David Russell, the Assad brothers and many others have performed in China. But most recitals are organised within the guitar circle. Because of the dense population in China, attendance for anything is pretty big compare to Europe. Things are developing quite quickly for the classical guitar in China.
Are there any guitar festivals in China?
Yes, there are a few. But they are not regular events. I believe there are going to be more and more guitar activities in China, guitar lovers are eager for good teaching and good playing. When I talk to my guitarist friends all over the world, they are very interested about the prospect of performing in China.
What it was like studying with Chen Zhi?
He is a self taught teacher. He is in charge of lots of things other than teaching. He trained me very well on the technical side. However, there isn't a sophisticated musical environment like in Europe in China and I found myself having lots of questions. I was confused about many things and eager in building up my musicianship.
Who did you study with at the Royal Academy and how has it helped your playing and musical out-look?
The academy is a great place: it has elite musicians, an open atmosphere and numerous activities. The guitar faculty is so well organised with lots of things going on, like playing chamber music, playing with singers, working with com­posers and so on. These are really good for an all around study. My main teacher was Michael Lewin, and sometimes I also took lessons with John Mills and Timothy Walker; they are all different and helpful. Since I came to London, I have really developed a great deal in my overall musical outlook, which is exactly what I want. I learnt not only from classes or teachers; in London, there is such a strong musical atmosphere and a broad view of the arts. To put it simply, I learnt how to play the guitar in China, and learnt how to perform music here. In China, many students were pushed to learn instrument and practice hard by their parents or teachers for some reasons other than music making. But here people play purely because they love music and devoted to music.
Have you finished at the Royal Academy now?
Yes, I finished in 2003. As an artist, though, I think you can never stop learning. And it's very important to keep you mind open and be sensitive to new ideas. You can learn from anything: any person, or other art forms.
And you've started giving master classes. How have they been going?
I enjoy it very much. I am also learning through my own teaching as well as being inspired by the students. Giving and benefiting others is always fascinating. I have also given private lessons since I was 15, but that's very different from master classes. Pointing out a problem is easy, but finding the solution is much harder. In addition, in a master class, I am always aware of the audience; it's a kind of a performance as well.
You've used a lot of different guitars over the years. What are you playing now?
A Smallman. It's a 2003 model which you can adjust the action. I find that very useful. I love Smallman's guitars. I feel they give me a larger space to express music. When you play some guitars loud, they buzz, but you don't get that with a Smallman. Smallman guitars are known to be loud, but it's not just a matter of loudness, there is the question of being able to sustain the sound. Some guitars are loud but percussive. The ability to sustain notes is very important for a plucked instrument, and a Smallman sustains so well while producing a warm and rich tone. One of the fascinating things about the guitar is the intimate sound. I feel on a Smallman I can play loud, soft, different colours and whatever I want. The most important thing is how the player controls the instrument.
But I've noticed you usually swap to a different instrument before playing the Ginastera Sonata.
Smallman has a very thin top so that I dare not hit at all. I've got another guitar that makes a good sound for this piece.
Are you planning to stay living in London for the foreseeable future?
London is one of the most important centers of music and arts. It's great for artists. For the time being, I will stay here but I plan to spend more and more time in Asia especially China. I think Asia has a great potential for music. Europe and America are already full of classical and pop musicians. Because Asia is developing so rapidly, I believe people automatically want more entertainment and higher arts. Of course, China is taking the leading role in Asia. It's a market of great potential. I feel responsible and I am committed to take something back to China. Maybe in ten years, Shanghai and Beijing will become totally international cities and by that time I could live in Beijing and continue my international career.
Recording
Classical Guitar Recital Shine Horn SC-1029 CD
Xuefei Yang's website address is: www.xuefeiyang.com |
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发表于 2005-8-1 18:56:40
