Photography / Noble
For the music industry, these two days have been very sad.
At 17:25 on March 13, Li Guangxi, a famous lyric tenor singer, opera performance artist and national first-class actor of the Central Opera House, died of a sudden cerebral infarction in Beijing at the age of 93. Just half a day later, composer wu Zuqiang, former president of the Central Conservatory of Music, died in Beijing on March 14 at the age of 94. The departure of two titans in the Chinese music industry has triggered collective mourning among people in the music industry. Someone said, "Remembering his music is the best memorial to the people's musicians." "Although these two respected old artists are far away from us, their contributions to Chinese music, their rigorous professional attitude, and their approachable and positive life standards are all great assets for future generations."
Lee Kwang Hee
"Literary and art workers are indispensable screws on the gears of the revolution, and I myself did receive revolutionary education through singing, and songs themselves are just art, and when they are given historical significance and revolutionary significance, they become different." As a literary and art worker, Li Guangxi's life has been dedicated to the cause of singing.
Born in Tianjin in 1929, Li Guangxi was admitted to the Central Experimental Opera and Dance Theater in 1954. In 1956, in the first classical opera "La Traviata" in New China, which was personally instructed by Premier Zhou Enlai, Li Guangxi played the male protagonist Alfred and became popular in one fell swoop. Subsequently, he starred in Asker in "The Cargo Man and the Miss" and Linkski in the Russian opera "Evgeny Onegin", which is well known to audiences everywhere.
In addition to opera, Li Guangxi also sang "Toast Song", "Beijing Ode", "Premier Zhou, Where Are You", "Gulangyu Wave", "Long Voyage", as well as many Chinese and foreign opera arias, foreign folk songs and art songs, which are familiar to the audience.
Professional rigor Live to the old, learn from the old
In 2010, the National Centre for the Performing Arts version of "La Traviata" was staged, which was directed and directed by world master conductor Lorraine Maazel, directed by Haining Blockhouse, and starring Ding Yi and Zhang Liping. The crew specially invited Li Guangxi to the National Centre for the Performing Arts to watch rehearsals and performances. "From 1956 to 1984, La Traviata performed 20 times on the 2,400-seat Shanghai Grand Stage and 39 times at the 2,300-seat First Workers' Cultural Palace in Tianjin, and by 1979 alone, the Audience of this Western opera in China exceeded at least 130,000." At that time, Li Guangxi recalled his opera career at the rehearsal scene with infinite emotion. "The Traviata" was put on the Chinese stage, which was an extremely sensational event in that year. Since then, "La Traviata" has had a Chinese exclusive identity: Chinese the most familiar and closest Western opera. ”
Although 12 years have passed, tenor Ding Yi still remembers the scene vividly. That time was Ding Yi's first time playing "La Traviata" after returning from the Sydney Opera House, and since Li Guangxi was the first Alfred actor in China, they had a lot of communication about this role. Ding Yi revealed, "We have a consensus on the understanding of this character, the voice is made of Italian bel canto, and the performance should be as close as possible to the character. ”
Lun Bing, a former reporter and music critic of Beijing Youth Daily, formed a deep friendship with Li Guangxi during his interviewing career. Lun Bing believes that Li Guangxi is an artist who constantly pursues art, "When I was young, I grew up watching Mr. Li Guangxi's operas, and his performances were very superb. I remember that the National Centre for the Performing Arts first staged "La Traviata", Teacher Li went to see it, and after watching it, he called me and said that he had a lot of feelings and wanted to write an article. He said that every time he watched "La Traviata", he could learn a lot from it, and he should be the kind of artist who lived to be old and learned from the old, and he was very strict about art. ”
Bring the younger generations to spread the music as much as they can
Many singers who have become famous today have grown up listening to Li Guangxi's songs.
Singer Mo Hong is one of them, she revealed that she just graduated to work at the Central Opera House, it has been 31 years, "for so many years, Teacher Li has always been particularly concerned about me, I grew up listening to his songs." Singer Dai Yuqiang also told the Beijing Youth Daily reporter, "Teacher Li is a figure of the level of a titan, and the generations after us are influenced by him, he is the idol in our hearts." In their view, Li Guangxi was a person who could not sit idle, and in his later years he was still active on the stage, contributing to the dissemination and popularization of music.
In 2019, the immersive opera "La Traviata", produced by Dai Yuqiang and starring young actors of the Glorious Opera Troupe, was staged in Beijing. Dai Yuqiang invited Li Guangxi to come and guide, and Li Guangxi gladly agreed. At that time, At the scene, Li Guangxi also shared his experience with young opera actors for many years, "Opera is drama, drama is life, and only by studying life thoroughly can there be a basis for making the audience moved." Lee Advised young opera singers not only to master singing, but also to learn a little shape and dance: "Forget yourself in the process of performance, you are the character." ”
Dai Yuqiang said that Li Guangxi not only strives for excellence in business, but also his attitude to life is more "let us sigh and envy", "He has always had the habit of sports, swimming, cycling, walking." He was particularly low-key and modest in his life, never thinking of himself as an artist, and always rode his bicycle to participate in the event. His hard work on the profession and a positive and healthy attitude to life are particularly worth learning from our younger generations. ”
Wu Zuqiang
From "Erquan Yingyue", which is based on Ah Bing's erhu solo song, to "Good Night", which is based on Liu Tianhua's original erhu song, from participating in the creation of the pipa and orchestra concerto "Little Sisters of the Prairie", the modern ballet "Red Detachment of Women", to "Composition and Work Analysis" and many other textbooks and anthologies... In the history of modern Chinese music, Wu Zuqiang is a name that cannot be ignored.
Born in Beijing in 1927, Wu Zuqiang entered the Department of Theoretical Composition of the National Conservatory of Music in Nanjing in 1947, where he studied under Jiang Dingxian. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Wu Zuqiang became one of the first three music students to stay in the Soviet Union, and went to study at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow with conductor Li Delun and soprano Singer Guo Shuzhen, and after returning to China, he taught in the Composition Department of the Central Conservatory of Music, successively serving as assistant professor, lecturer, associate professor and professor. In 1978, he became the vice president of the Central Conservatory of Music, and in 1982, he became the dean. In June 2019, "Wanquan River Water Is Clear and Clear", composed by Wu Zuqiang and composed by Du Mingxin, was selected as one of the "100 Excellent Songs Celebrating the 70th Anniversary of the Founding of the People's Republic of China" by the Propaganda Department.
He never left the podium
In terms of creation, Wu Zuqiang has created musical works of various genres and forms such as orchestral music, concertos, dance dramas, choruses, chamber music, solo pieces, etc., the most well-known to the audience are the Chinese dance drama "Fish Beauty" with Du Mingxin, and the modern ballet "Red Detachment of Women" with Du Mingxin, Wang Yanqiao, Shi Wanchun and Dai Hongwei. In addition, Wu Zuqiang's pipa concerto "Little Sisters of the Grassland" cooperated with Liu Dehai and Wang Yanqiao, and the pipa and orchestra music poem "Spring River Flower Moon Night" cooperated with Liu Dehai are also popular. His adaptations of "Erquan Yingyue" and "Listening to Song" based on Ah Bing's Erhu solo pieces, as well as "Good Night", which are based on Liu Tianhua's original Erhu songs, are also classic works that have been performed for a long time.
Wu Zuqiang's symphonic works express national emotions with Western orchestral techniques, and the perfect art form is unified with the deep ideological connotation, which fully embodies the soul of the nation and has become a Chinese music classic in the twentieth century.
Although his writings are equal, Wu Zuqiang is most proud that he has never left the podium in his life. Wu Zuqiang served as the vice president and dean of the Central Conservatory of Music, and his tenure added up to 11 years, cultivating many outstanding musical talents for the world. His teaching career lasted for more than 50 years, and creation became his amateur work. After returning from studying abroad, Wu Zuqiang returned to the podium to serve the motherland, systematically introduced the Western orchestral techniques he learned in the Soviet Union into Chinese music teaching, and edited and published the composition technology theory textbook "Composition and Composition Analysis" and other translations, which were used by generations of music students. Nowadays, the book "Analysis of Compositions and Works" has been published in more than 100,000 copies in the mainland, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and has won the National Colleges and Universities Excellent Textbook Award. His music creation and teaching have made outstanding contributions to the creation of mainstream chinese music culture and promoted the development of Chinese symphony creation.
As a student of Wu Zuqiang, the composer Hao Wei was very clear about the teacher's thoughts, "He is a composer, but he can proudly say at any time that he has never left the podium in his life." ”
The seriousness with which professionalism is taken is unforgettable
From 1989, when he was admitted to the Composition Department of the Central Conservatory of Music, to his doctoral degree, Hao Wei studied composition with Wu Zuqiang for ten years. Wu Zuqiang's deepest impression on Hao Wei was rigor.
"Strictly speaking, I was his last undergraduate, and since then he's only accepted graduate students. Rigor can be said to be reflected in all aspects of his work and life. Hao Wei still remembers that once when he was in class about Shostakovich's "Thirteenth Symphony", Wu Zuqiang pulled out the general score of this work from the bookshelf, and it was densely packed with records, "He told me that when this work was first performed, he sat behind Shostakovich and witnessed all kinds of details, which was very rare, and the teacher's serious attitude towards professionalism still makes me unforgettable." ”
The bits and pieces of student growth, Wu Zuqiang remembered in his heart. Whenever Hao Wei created a new work, Wu Zuqiang would listen to the scene and make various suggestions, which continued until 2014. In 2014, the opening ceremony of the Shanghai International Arts Festival staged Hao Wei's opera "A River of Spring Water", and At that time, Wu Zuqiang's health was not as good as before, but he insisted on taking a wheelchair to Shanghai to watch the opera premiere, "At that time, I had a feeling that it would be difficult for the teacher to go out in the future." So that time, Hao Wei specially took Wu Zuqiang to the Bund and Pudong to see, which was also the last time the old man went out.
Tian Wanting, reporter of this group
Co-ordinator/Liu Jianghua