In January 1989, 25-year-old Lu Jia arrived in Berlin from Beijing with $300. For more than 20 years, he worked as artistic director at the Italian National Opera in Verona, working and living all over Europe, with a lot of "first" labels on him - he was both the first Chinese to serve as director of the Italian Opera and the first Chinese conductor to conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Ten years ago, he dropped everything in Europe and chose to return home. At the 2012 National Centre for the Performing Arts' "Dragon and Phoenix: Global Chinese New Year Concert", Lu Jia took the stage as the principal conductor of the National Centre for the Performing Arts Orchestra. At that time, he wanted to give himself a challenge to bring the experience and methods accumulated in the European music scene over the past 20 years, as well as the system and norms of European orchestras, to China, and personally train a high-level Chinese orchestra.
In March 2022, Lu Jia performed two "Ten Years of Jiayin" concerts at the National Centre for the Performing Arts to commemorate his decade with the orchestra.
The concert featured orchestral works from Wagner's The Famous Singers of Nuremberg and Tristan and Isolde, as well as Bruckner's Symphony No. 9. Under his baton, the National Centre for the Performing Arts Orchestra presented the timbre of a European orchestra.
On the night of the performance, there was a long queue outside the theater, and the audience wearing masks was subjected to epidemic prevention inspection. Three years after the epidemic, such scenes are the norm for the National Centre for the Performing Arts. "The Grand Theatre has four halls, and as long as there is a performance, it is full, which was incredible before." Lu Jia confessed to First Finance and Economics that in the past ten years, he and the orchestra have almost started from scratch and taken many roads that others have not walked. He saw the growth of the orchestra and himself, and also saw the rapid changes in the Chinese classical music market in the past decade.
Bumps and luck
If he didn't study music, Lu Jia would most likely choose physics or mathematics that he liked.
He was born into a musical family in Shanghai, his father was the conductor of the Zongzheng Military Orchestra, and his mother was a singer. At the age of 11, he followed his parents to Beijing, and he began to formally study music, and at the age of 15, he was admitted to the Affiliated Middle School of the Central Conservatory of Music.
When Lu Jia was admitted to the Central Conservatory of Music, she studied under Zheng Xiaoying, China's first female conductor, and was the only student in the conducting department that year. Zheng Xiaoying's impression of this proud disciple was that he was smart, but playful and did not need to work. Lu Jia remembers that at that time, he was addicted to literature, soaked in the school library, and read all the philosophical works and world famous works that he could borrow. In retrospect, his understanding of music, philosophy and history came from his "omnivorous" reading during that time.
Going to the Berlin Academy of Arts in Germany for further study was a turning point in Lu Jia's life. On the first day of the Chinese New Year in 1989, he went to Berlin with only enough money for a few days of accommodation, spent the night everywhere, washed dishes, worked as a porter, and slept on the steps of the subway entrance.
"Like I was born in this era, I have seen a lot of social changes, but there are not many hardships and ups and downs that I have really suffered, and more is lucky." Lu Jia said that in May of that year, he completely changed his fate because he saw a poster.
It was a poster of antonio Pedroti's international conducting competition, who signed up but was placed on the bench because of too many places.
The process of participating in the competition was also dramatic, from substitute to official participation, he experienced all kinds of passing possibilities - first he could not get a visa, it was easy to get to the local area, he was killed by a black driver, he ran out of money, the train was delayed, and he almost missed the last check-in time. After a five-day schedule, the youngest contestant, Lu Jia, won the championship and the special prize of the jury, won 12,000 marks in prize money, and a succession of performance invitations began to pour in.
"There are at least 20 nodes in the competition, as long as any one of the nodes has a problem, my life is another way of writing, which is also the interesting part of life." Since then, Mr. Lu says, he has decided that music is a lifelong career.
More Italian than Italians
The following year after the competition, Lu Jia was introduced by the director of the Opera House in Florence, Italy, to become the music director of the National Opera in Trieste, Italy.
"In the hundreds of years of history of this opera house, no Chinese conductor has ever come." Lu Jia said that he is not only an Oriental, but also the youngest director in the history of the orchestra. Although some people in the orchestra were skeptical and some people were dismissive, many more people were full of curiosity and expectation for him.
After the daily rehearsals, the veteran members of the orchestra pulled Lu Jia to eat and drink, and the conversation lasted for three or four hours, telling him a lot of stories and experiences of the Conductors of the Tuscanini generation, "Now it seems that those chats are extremely valuable assets." ”
In Europe, Lu Jia was rated as "more Italian than Italians". He once corrected the pronunciation of an Italian soprano, at first the soprano did not accept, Lu Jia discussed with her the musical color of the whole work, can not sacrifice the precision of the tone and the expression of the line because of the sound, the soprano is satisfied.
Until now, Lu Jia still thinks that it is very difficult to be a conductor, and in the history of music, many famous conductors have started from assistants and climbed the conductor's stage little by little. But he stood in the position of director from the beginning, taking the lead from a different perspective.
He has an extremely sensitive sense of hearing, can keenly control the color of music, and relies on his ears and experience to adjust the color of an orchestra like color grading. The reason why he can stand out in the European opera world is because most of the European opera conductors were first trained as piano directors, and he has a solid basic skill in symphony conducting.
For more than 20 years in Europe, Lu Jia mastered five or six foreign languages, which was a prerequisite for him to conduct opera works in different countries. His repertoire of operas and symphonies ranges from German and Austrian classical music to late Romantic works, from French Impressionism to Russian and Italian classical music and romantic opera, up to modern and contemporary music.
The Italian newspaper El Repubblica once commented on Lu Jia, "His guidance and precise understanding of the traditions of Italian opera, the lyrics, the stage and, above all, the vocal music, is astonishing." Deutsche Sud commented: "Under the leadership of this young conductor, the Italian National Radio Symphony Orchestra exudes poetic delicacy and artistic conception, and he will become one of the best conductors in the world." ”
In more than 20 years, he has conducted more than 700 concerts and operas in Europe, North America, South America, Oceania and Asia, which is rare in the world.
The command maniac who returned home
"Compared with Europe, china's classical music environment is really far behind." Lu Jia recalled that ten years ago, friends around him advised him that since he had achieved fame in Italy, he could enjoy the next life with peace of mind.
The opera market in Italy is more mature than in China and has a larger audience. He also knows that if he stays in Italy, outside of work, he is enjoying life, gathering friends, traveling on holidays, eating and drinking, and being free.
In contrast, the National Centre for the Performing Arts Orchestra was a newly established new troupe, no matter the performance experience, repertoire, and even the instruments, it could not be compared with any foreign orchestra, the new face and new environment, full of unknowns.
"Artists with blood type B make decisions very quickly." Speaking about the decision, Lu Jia said that he fully understood the challenges and difficulties that were about to be faced at that time, but he was more aware of one thing, "In Italy, I was just a part of their musical history. If I go back home, I can create and realize some new value. ”
Long Yu, an old friend, returned to China from Germany in 1992, founded the Beijing International Music Festival in 1998, then the China Philharmonic Orchestra, and five years later took the orchestra to Europe and the United States. These changes are in the eyes of Lu Jia, and he is constantly invited to return to China to take command.
"The Chinese classical music market has changed a lot. The first is the country's theaters, opera houses, concert halls, nearly a thousand, and there are now more than 80 symphony orchestras. Lu Jia said that staying in Europe is "step by step, do not have to think about anything", but returning to China is a completely new possibility, regardless of the investment of time and energy, will be several times the past.
"I didn't think about making a big difference, I just wanted to live a little more dashing, and it was enough for others to be happier because of you." 」 Lu Jia said. Every time he finished rehearsing with the orchestra, he would make a flying kiss gesture and say "You guys are the best" and thank you.
In this decade, Lu Jia held eight music seasons with the National Centre for the Performing Arts Orchestra, an amphibious orchestra spanning symphony and opera, and has performed 30 operas so far, touring the United States twice.
People called him the "conductor maniac." At its most intensive, he rehearsed operas in the morning, symphonic works in the afternoon, and performed on stage in the evening, without stopping throughout the day. His requirements for the orchestra are not only to rely on technology, but also to have a taste for sound, timbre and sentences, to cooperate with each other, and to be flexible in the transformation of harmonies.
Ten years of growth
Liu Shuang, the orchestra's trombone principal, saw that Lü Jia was not easy as a conductor, they were an amphibious orchestra spanning symphony and opera, which required the conductor to "control the orchestra, music and stage, but also have a certain talent for language." ”
The most touching performance in the memory of the chief Zhuang Ran was Brahms's Third Symphony. When performing on stage, she seems to split into two selves, one on stage and one offstage, "wrapped in melodies and harmonies, almost to the point of tears." The most impressive thing about the orchestra's performance of Puccini's opera "Tosca" in the first round of the orchestra was that from the stage to the music to the chorus, the effect was very shocking.
In Lu Jia's eyes, this orchestra is young, energetic, passionate, and enthusiastic, and he has led this group of young people, from Puccini's "Tosca" to Wagner's "Ron green" and "The Wandering Dutchman", to Verdi's "Othello", to "The Famous Singers of Nuremberg", creating milestones in opera performances. He remembers many of the band's shining points in the past decade, with Schubert's Ninth Symphony performing well and Bruckner's Sixth Symphony touring South Korea and "sensationalizing the Korean music scene."
When the orchestra went on a tour of the United States, Lu Jia observed that the audience was a local veteran music fan. The Music Review of the United States commented on them, "The orchestra and conductor have complete control over Dvořák's colorful Eighth Symphony, as well as the stage of the entire symphony center." ”
In the past decade, he has seen the size of the Chinese classical music market become huge, and the number of audiences has grown rapidly along with the originality of Chinese opera. The National Centre for the Performing Arts alone has rehearsed more than 80 operas since its establishment, of which 20 to 30 are Original Chinese Operas, and there are dozens of symphonic works commissioned by the Grand Theatre. Lu Jia said that he grew up with the most creative generation in China.
The epidemic has blocked the orchestra's original North American tour plan, but it has also opened a new era of "cloud performance". In April 2020, the National Centre for the Performing Arts opened its first online concert, and by December of that year, 42 performances in the four major online series had been broadcast, with a total of more than 1.2 billion plays.
After the epidemic, with the gradual opening of the theater, Lu Jia can feel more, "The people are very enthusiastic and urgent for high-quality performances. "In the future, he wants to continue to lead the orchestra to the international world with the goal of a good European orchestra," and he wanted to reach a new height musically. ”
Last month, Lu Jia received a call from her mentor Zheng Xiaoying, "She told me that she started a business again." The 93-year-old said excitedly that the "Zheng Xiaoying Opera Art Center" in Xiamen opened, and she was going to take the stage to conduct the first performance.
"Teacher Zheng can start a business again at the age of 93, so our generation can conduct for another 40 years." Lu Jia said.