Hello! "Big Girl" records the growth story between Zheng Xiaoying, China's first female conductor, and music, as well as her belief in the profession of conducting and her thinking on music education.
"How did you defeat the man and stand on the podium?" When Zheng Xiaoying went to Harvard to give a lecture, the reporter asked such a sharp question. Zheng Xiaoying replied: "When I was growing up, in China, at least among intellectuals, there was no gender discrimination. ”
In February 1955, Dumashev was invited to the Chorus of the Central Song and Dance Troupe to conduct, when Soviet experts offered to organize a conducting training class, and among the 25 conductors selected from all over the country, only Zheng Xiaoying was a woman. She was fortunate to be selected and entrusted with her outstanding professional ability.
Zheng Xiaoying has many titles, she has many firsts, in her youth, she dared to break through, becoming China's first female symphony conductor, the first Chinese conductor to stand in the top opera house. This breakthrough of hers actually paved the way for more female conductors and female musicians.
The awakening of Zheng Xiaoying's female consciousness was deeply influenced by her mother, who was avant-garde in her thinking, dared to think and dare to do, and never instilled in Zheng Xiaoying the ideas of "women are not as good as men" and "three from four virtues", and always encouraged her to do things that can be done best and then bravely do it.
In 1978, when Zheng Xiaoying rearranged "La Traviata" at the Central Opera House, the noise of the scene affected the performance atmosphere, and she thought of a way to give music-related lectures before the performance to let everyone better understand music, which attracted many audiences. The audience's thirst for fresh knowledge has allowed the "Zheng Xiaoying model" to continue to this day.
Unable to rehearse during the epidemic, she recorded the course "Make the Ears Smarter" and moved the "Zheng Xiaoying Mode" online. When asked why so many challenging things are done at such an old age, she replied without hesitation: "There are difficulties that need to be done, and if it is not difficult, why bother to do it."
The symphonic poem "Tulou Echo" is a symphony that expresses the struggle and unity of the Hakka people who have migrated south to live in the Fujian-Guangdong-Gansu Border Region since ancient times due to the war. Zheng Xiaoying took this symphony to 12 countries and held 77 performances, setting a record for the highest number of large-scale symphony performances in the mainland.
In the program, she explained the musical techniques used in this symphony, meticulously described the progressive transition of each level of emotion, and sang it when it came to the emotional place, and the grandeur and grandeur of the symphony instantly made people excited.
Zheng Xiaoying, who has dedicated her life to music, says she has been reaching out to the audience on stage and knowing what they need and what is missing. Don't look at the river surface as flat as a mirror, but look at the depth of the water. "Singing in foreign opera" is something that Zheng Xiaoying has always insisted on, as Zheng Xiaoying said, for unfamiliar cultural fields, Western music is not just able to play, the public can immediately experience the value of absorbing it.
While studying in Moscow, when Zheng Xiaoying was conducting the Symphony of Sorrows, her mentor severely criticized her: "If you don't understand this music, don't conduct it." This was a considerable blow to Zheng Xiaoying, and when she mourned Premier Zhou at Tiananmen Square after returning to China, when she saw the masses and the team moving forward in silence, she suddenly understood Tchaikovsky's "Symphony of Sorrows", which is a struggle I also have to move forward, no matter how big the obstacle, I will never back down.
Having suffered from cancer three times, Zheng Xiaoying has never flinched, she said that she did not treat the disease as a threat, but treated it head-on and actively treated it. "Life, old age, illness and death seem to be a regularity, since it is coming, then actively deal with it, I just want to try to do something more before leaving." The 92-year-old Zheng Xiaoying and Yang Lan passionately described their next plans, such as: opera audition business, promoting Gulangyu Island into a music island and learning to drive themselves. Zheng Xiaoying has been doing things that have an impact on society all her life, and retirement does not affect her busy steps, and "hardcore grandma" is well deserved.
Hello! Big girl
END