"It is as if it is blown by the wind with ice and snow, but in this cold wind, in a certain place there is a plum tree swaying in the cold wind, and with the blowing of the wind, the plum blossoms are scattered little by little." The moment Cecilia Lindqvist's voice fell, Guqin player Deng Hong gently stroked the silk strings and plucked a song called "Plum Blossom Three Alleys". After a while, the sound of the whistle was like a corresponding harmony, and the cold winter afternoon was clear, and a window plum shadow was just in contrast to the clear world outside the house.
——This is the scene of the Swedish Embassy in China on November 16, 2009, which held a press conference for Lin Xili's new book "Guqin".
Time flies, 12 years have passed, it is winter in November, I came to the Swedish Embassy in China to participate in the memorial service of Swedish sinologist Ms. Lin Xili, in the same room, caressing the same guqin, playing the same piano song, the fingers flowing with familiar melodies, I can't help but think of a blonde foreign old man standing next to me, telling the story of the guqin...
One
On April 12, 2007, I received an email from Lin Xili, and when I opened it, I was confused, and the letters in the email were dense, but it was not English. After studying it for a while, I suddenly realized that this was written in Hanyu Pinyin. It turned out that Lin Xili knew that my English was not good, and her computer could not type Chinese characters, so she wrote this email in Hanyu Pinyin. She told me in an email that her new book, Guqin, had been published and was very popular. The Chinese Embassy was going to hold a cultural event in August and asked her to introduce the guqin, and she agreed, but she said she would definitely invite me to Sweden, and she would explain the guqin and I would play it.
Hosting a guqin concert in Sweden has been Lin Xili's wish for many years. She wrote in a later email:
During 1961-62, I had the honor of learning the piano under Wang Di. We became close friends with each other, but at that time I didn't realize how Wang Di had influenced me and made me deeply connected to Chinese culture, and it was in the years that that experience changed my life.
As I wrote in my recently published book Another World, Wang Di and I lost contact during the Cultural Revolution, and I tried to search for it many times, but I didn't find it until 1978 — a man who worked at the Conservatory of Music south of Liubukou helped me find Wang Di's residence and contact her. It was a great moment for me!
In the years that followed, Wang Di and I had been discussing that we should go to Sweden for a concert, and I would explain the guqin and she would play it. Unfortunately, Wang Di died in the spring of 2005. A year later, my book Guqin was published. I am devastated that our lifelong aspirations have not had a chance to come true. At this time, I suddenly thought of Deng Hong, wrote to her, asked her if she could come, and she said yes. And so it all begins!
Wang Di and Lin Xili (1961)
My guqin journey with Lin Xili for more than ten years began!
Two
The performance forms of the guqin are diverse, including piano music, piano songs, solos, ensembles and so on. When planning the performance format of this Swedish concert, At first, Lin Xili just wanted me to solo the guqin and sing Mr. Wang Di's piano songs. Considering the stage effect and the audience's feelings, I suggested adding another musical instrument "pipe" to enrich the program, and Lin Xili immediately agreed.
When Lin Xili studied guqin at the Guqin Research Association, she often heard the performers Guan Pinghu and Cha Fuxi playing together, and she felt that Swedish audiences would like the piano ensemble as a form of playing. So, for this performance, she invited me to Sweden with the flute player Chen Shasha.
The Ministry of Culture attaches great importance to this trip to Sweden and has specially opened up special channels. On August 14, 2007, our piano team arrived in Stockholm.
Over the course of eight days, we performed eight performances at the Stockholm Museum of Music (two), the Eskilstuna Art Gallery, the Gothenburg World Culture Center, the Stockholm Far East Heritage Museum, the Uppsala Brull Jorter Museum, the Ludwijká City Library, and the Chinese Embassy in Sweden.
Lin Xili and Deng Hong on tour (2007)
According to Lin Xili's request, the repertoire of the performance is all the traditional guqin songs she knows and loves. Lin Xili studied more than 20 guqin songs with Mr. Wang Di at the Beijing Guqin Research Association, including "Pingsha Falling Goose", "Spring Xiaoyin", "Liangxiao Introduction", "Hu Di", "Gull Heron Forgetting Machine", "Yan Nai", "Yangguan Three Stacks", "Wind and Thunder Introduction" and so on. Lin Xili believes that the above repertoire is traditional, easy to understand, and easy to listen to. When playing, you can start with a piece that is easy to understand, and then go from shallow to deep, which is easy for the audience to accept. At the beginning of the concert and during the performance, Lin Xili wants to tell the audience in detail about the history of the guqin, the story of the piano and her feelings.
Catalogue of audio tapes handwritten by Wang Di
After the publication of the book "Guqin", Lin Xili gave many lectures in various parts of Sweden, making many people in Sweden aware of the Chinese instrument of the guqin. These eight performances made the Swedish audience see the guqin with their own eyes and hear the guqin with their own ears. The performance received better than expected, the venue was full, and it was difficult to find a ticket. Local media evaluated the guqin concert as "elegant and pure".
As soon as we returned home, Lin Xili sent an email excitedly:
Thank you very much for coming to Sweden and bringing us intoxicating music and great performances, what a magical experience! I, and everyone who listens to your music, is deeply moved in my heart. The sincere emotion and passion brought by music touched all people.
Many people say that it is the most beautiful music they have ever heard. I get a lot of complaints that tickets sell too fast and they can't buy them. A lot of people urged me to schedule more concerts as soon as possible.
An important Swedish national institution, the Swedish National Music Association, has approached me to discuss the next steps of cooperation together in a few weeks. The association organizes 40 major tours a year and has more than 700 concert halls in Sweden.
I don't know how much interest you will be in coming back to Sweden, but I and thousands of Swedish music lovers sincerely hope you will come back again!
Three
The tour schedule soon echoed, and the Swedish National Music Association invited us to tour more than a dozen cities in Sweden from February to March 2009.
To this end, Lin Xili suggested recording a CD album of piano music.
At concerts in Sweden, there are CD albums by performers for sale, and after listening to the performances, the audience can buy CDs to go back to enjoy and take souvenirs.
Regarding the positioning of this CD, Lin Xili's opinion is that it is only related to concerts:
This product is not commercial, CDs are not sold in regular stores, only related to our concerts. In Sweden and most Western countries, this practice is common and is a courtesy to thank the public who come to the concert, providing them with CD albums by musicians who host concerts, which can be bought as souvenirs, and as a way for musicians to show themselves to the public.
Lin Xili also suggested that traditional silk strings be used for recording and performance. Because Lin Xili has a special preference for silk strings. It can be said that she is very retro, the metallic taste in Western pop music, she feels too noisy, only the silk strings can show the ancient and thick tone of the guqin and the charm of the aftersound. When the old gentlemen performed at the Beijing Guqin Research Association, the sound of traditional silk strings left an indelible impression on her mind.
In October 2008, Lin Xili made a special trip to Beijing to find one of her Swedish students, hoping that he would sponsor the recording and publication of our CD album. This Swedish student has been doing business in China for many years and has a well-developed business acumen. He drew up a contract, but the conditions were quite harsh and we did not agree.
Things suddenly reached an impasse, Lin Xili also unexpectedly, full of hope, fell into the trough in an instant, she said disappointedly, the recording canceled, or we accept his conditions?
I thought twice and decided to fund the recording of the CD myself. Although there is a certain risk, you may not be able to find a publisher, and you will not be able to publish it in the end, but the recording can stay in your own hands, and the risk is worth it.
Lin Xili saw hope again and promised to return to Sweden to find a publisher again.
The CD was recorded smoothly, using traditional silk strings, and the sound effect was really good, thick and textured, and the walking hand sound was quite outstanding. In the post-remixing process, we did not deliberately pursue the ethereal and distant sound effect, but tried to let the piano tone surround the listener, as if the player was right in front of the listener's eyes. The proportion of the sound of the piano and the harp has also been carefully adjusted, and when the piano is played in the treble area, the harp is octave low, setting off the piano, echoing with the piano tone, and continuing endlessly. The ensemble is not a simple unison, and the two players must cooperate with tacit understanding. The relationship between the primary and secondary organs of the piano and the harp should be clear, and the violin should not steal the limelight of the violin. Chen Shasha has a great feeling for guqin music, and the melancholy temperament in the flute adds a lot of color to the piano music.
When Lin Xili returned to Sweden, she took samples of CDs and a mother plate. But she wasn't sure she could find the right publisher. Sweden's record industry is very developed, but mostly engaged in popular music, for Chinese guqin music, will anyone be interested? Moreover, it was a world economic crisis.
A month later, the good news came: the publisher was found!
The CD publishing is all set! Capris, the record label of the Swedish Music Association, told me that they were happy to produce and sell our CDs. Recordings are made in time, completed before the tour and sent to various radio stations, etc. Capris will make CDs as attractive as possible, not using ordinary plastic packaging, they hope, to make a really good cardboard cover.
It turned out that after Lin Xili returned to China, she took the sample of the CD to find the head of the Swedish Music Association, and the person in charge exchanged ideas with Lin Xili, and listened to the CD, and immediately agreed that the record company under the Music Association would be responsible for publishing.
However, later this album called "TianLai Piano", for the sake of cost and sales, still used plastic packaging, and only 300 sets were produced at the beginning, because the Swedish Music Association felt that it was a high sales volume to sell 300 sets. (The world economic crisis of 2008 also affected the Swedish performance market.) ）
The album "Tian Lai Qin Zhen"
Four
From February 26 to March 23, 2009, at the invitation of the Swedish National Music Association, I, Chen Shasha and Lin Xili toured 18 cities in Sweden, performing a total of 21 performances.
For 26 days, almost every day there was a concert, and every day I was running between the cities, without rest and adjustment.
The format of the performance is the same as that in August 2007, when the performance began, Lin Xili first explained the knowledge of the guqin. Before each piece is played, Lin Xili explains the story of the piano piece. Lin Xili speaks in Swedish, although we can't understand it, we can feel that the audience is completely brought into the mysterious guqin world by her explanation, as Lin Xili wrote in the book "Guqin": "We enter the predecessors through music and feel the various experiences of life, which is the most fascinating part of the guqin tradition."
Lin Xili's opening speech will last about 20 minutes, and while she speaks on stage, Sasha and I prepare backstage. We don't understand Swedish, but we can read Lin Xili's physical movements, such as in "Flowing Water", and she will use gestures to depict mountain springs and water flows. When I heard her say the word "Deng Hong", I knew it was time for me to appear.
Although the guqin is unfamiliar to the Swedish audience, the expression method of the music is the same, and the story behind the guqin is also what the audience can imagine and understand. When the pan-sound of "Flowing Water" started, the audience immediately felt the mountain stream jumping happily, from the trickling stream into the river and the sea, Lin Xili's in-depth and simple explanation led everyone to feel the imagination aroused by the beautiful landscape of nature in their hearts, and also deeply experienced the ancient people's unruly, talentless, lonely and self-congratulatory feelings expressed in the song. The melody of "欸乃" is depicted by Lin Xili, and the boatman's trumpet seems to echo in the theater. Foreign audiences can't understand Chinese, but whenever the melody of "Phoenix" sounds, in the melody of "Phoenix", in the melodious and lyrical piano songs, the audience is deeply sighing for the poignant love of Lu You and Tang Wan. When I returned to the stage, I played "Drunkard", and Lin Xili on the stage and the audience listened like crazy, laughing forward and backward.
In addition to the concert hall, there are libraries, churches (solemn, no sound required), art galleries, sculpture halls and so on.
The concert was unprecedented, with a month-long tour that caused a lively response across Sweden. The performance was fully covered by local television, radio stations and print media, in particular The Swedish National Television One, Swedish Commercial Four, the Swedish National Radio Music Channel, the Swedish morning newspapers Daily News and the Swedish Daily, respectively, interviewed and reported on the performance. The station played our CD singles in a regular section, and the station invited us to participate in a talk show.
Chinese Ambassador to Sweden Chen Mingming and his wife Ye Shufang specially held a special guqin concert at the ambassador's official residence to entertain Swedish political and cultural circles and envoys and their wives from many countries in Sweden. Mr. Mikael Schultz, then Deputy Director General of the Department of International Cooperation of the Swedish Ministry of Culture, said after listening to the performance, Pu Zhengdong, Cultural Counsellor of the Chinese Embassy in Sweden, that "Deng Hong and the other two performers are the best cultural ambassadors in China." From one side, Chinese piano music reflects the profound heritage of China's thousands of years of civilization, which is the charm of Chinese culture and can make people more deeply understand the origin of China's concept of harmony.
The domestic Global Times, with the title of "Sinologists Enthusiastically Promote, Guqin Enters Swedish Folk - Chinese Culture Goes to the Countryside Abroad", praised this tour as a very worthy way to promote Chinese culture to the world.
The record label soon regretted not preparing more CDs. The concert had only been held twice, and all the CDs were sold out. Even a few CDs given to me and Sasha at the press conference were asked to be returned and sent to the concert hall for emergency. When we left the northern Swedish city of Umeå and flew to the next performance city, the Swedish Music Association had urgently notified the publisher to produce the next batch of CDs. When we returned home, we only brought back a cd. Because I opened the package, they couldn't go back and sell it.
Later, according to the statistics of the record company, more than 2,000 copies of "TianLai Qin zhen" were sold, and Songlines, an authoritative music magazine in the United Kingdom, wrote in this article entitled "The New Queen of the Piano Industry":
Whether in China or abroad, the piano has few but fanatical suitors. Playing the piano was once a talent of the literati, usually accompanied by chanting, calligraphy, sword dance, accompanied by solemn manners, and tasting fine wine. The piano is only played for close friends in elegant gatherings, and it needs to be listened to carefully. It does not have the gorgeous colors like Peking Opera, and it does not have the unrestrained enthusiasm of country music.
Women also have a long history of playing the piano, but only recently have they been slightly recognized in the piano world. Deng Hong is a woman who studied at the China Conservatory of Music. She has a very good family background - her mother, Wang Di, studied under the Guqin and managed Pinghu. In addition, Deng Hong played a 13th-century piano. The delicate and subtle beauty of the piano is included in the CD, and every stroke of the finger on the string is captured at close range through the microphone, and the almost inaudible changes in vibrato and portamento. For example, the song "Guan Shan Yue" is very quiet, but other songs, such as "Flowing Water", show the sound of rapids rushing.
Since the 7th century, the sweet sound of the harp has become a beautiful companion of the violin. In this album, Chen Sasha also has a lot of flute playing.
Now everywhere is occasionally influenced by Chinese playing styles, "Yangguan Three Stacks", which is extremely slowed down until the end, using two instruments echoing each other between paragraphs, disrupting the consistent structure. This may also make purists (orthodoxists) feel a little uncomfortable.
Overall, this adds a good recording to this depth of instrumentation.
The success of this tour is due to the best-selling and promotion of Lin Xili's book "Guqin". Lin Xili has a wide range of popularity in Sweden, with many "fans", the audience who come to the concert, the vast majority of the readers of Lin Xili's book "Guqin", most of whom are middle-aged and elderly.
People's experience accumulates over time, and as they grow older, people's experience of life becomes deeper and deeper. These audiences like history, they like stories, they like to feel life. The profundity of traditional Chinese culture has never lacked moving stories and philosophies of life, and the stories and perceptions of life in Lin Xili's book have resonated with the thinking of middle-aged and elderly people. Moreover, this generation was deeply influenced by classical music when they were young, so it was easier to accept the soothing and beautiful tone of the guqin.
Also, the way our piano group plays is very similar to Western chamber music. Westerners appreciate chamber music as an elegant activity. In an interview, Lin Xili said: "Europeans have a desire for this serious chamber music, they want to hear this kind of music that inspires people and brings peace and tranquility to the heart. ”
Through Lin Xili, the bridge of friendship, guqin art extends to Sweden and finds a confidant in a foreign country.
In the decade since, we have travelled to Sweden several more times for major events and special tours of the guqin. In 2010, he held a special concert on the guqin for the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Switzerland, and participated in the opening ceremony of the Chinese Cultural Center in Stockholm in 2016. In 2015, the three of us also toured Confucius Institutes in Iceland, Latvia, Sweden and other places. More than 50 performances in total!
We also published an even more exquisite double CD, Heart Sound Strings, which, as Lin Xili hoped, was a "really good cardboard cover." Lin Xili personally designed the cover for this album and wrote the article "Song: Life and Destiny - Lin Xili Explains the Guqin" as the preface to the album, and detailed all the performances in Chinese and English. In the UK, Songlines magazine has a five-star rating of five stars.
Heart Sound Instrument album
Among them, the song "Good Night Introduction" was also selected as a commemorative CD for the 2012 Shanghai International Senior HIFI Demonstration Conference. The description of the commemorative CD contains the following comments:
Ms. Lin Xili, a Swedish sinologist, has been immersed in sinology since the 1950s and has authored books such as "The Story of Chinese Characters", "Guqin", and "The Story of Lin Xili Guqin". In 2010, with a deep affection for Chinese culture and guqin, Ms. Lin Xili planned this recording entitled "Heart Sound Harp", which was performed by guqin player Deng Hong and lute player Chen Shasha. This is a exemplary production, the proportions of the two instruments are clear at a glance, the air sensation is unparalleled, and the string shock is straight to the bottom of the heart. The reason why this song is placed in the final position is because it has the charm of precipitating distractions, and the song is calm and calm, and there is no anger.
If Lin Xili changed the trajectory of her life because she met the guqin and met Wang Di, then I went out of the country because of Lin Xili, so that the sound of the guqin spread farther. We are all doing the same thing, that is, inheriting and carrying forward the excellent traditional music and art of China. Music is a language that transcends race, transcends national boundaries, transcends time and space, and the guqin is like a magical bond that connects people who love her, whether ancient or modern, Chinese or foreigners, or even aliens, which is the charm of guqin. In ancient times, there were Boya and Zi period, and now there are Guan Pinghu and Wang Di, Wang Di and Lin Xili, the love of acquaintance, the love of teachers and students, this sincere friendship has been passed down from ancient times to the present.
Deng Hong, guqin player of the Central Chinese Orchestra, daughter of Wang Di.
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END
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