On the afternoon of June 23, at the National Centre for the Performing Arts, the Male Choir of Soldiers of the Armed Police Beijing Headquarters, dressed in red army uniforms, took the audience on a heroic journey of 25,000 miles with a song "Four Crossings of Red Water".
"Four Crossings of the Red Water Surprise Soldier" is from the large vocal suite "Long March Suite Song". In 1965, the "Long March Suite Song", which was created to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the victory of the Long March of the Red Army, was premiered by the former Comrades-in-Arms Cultural and Labor Troupe of the Beijing Military Region and has been sung ever since. As one of the series of activities of the National Centre for the Performing Arts to celebrate the centenary of the founding of the Party, "Party History in Literary and Art Classics", this event invited Shao Weizheng, an expert in party history, Ma Ziyue, the first generation singer of "Long March Suite", Yu Naijiu, a second-generation singer, Ye Cui and Zhang Dawei, a third-generation singer, and the Soldier Male Choir of the Beijing Armed Police Corps to relive the front and back of the stage of "Long March Group Song" through interviews, performances, film screenings and other forms.
The lyricist of "Long March Suite Song" is General Xiao Hua, who personally experienced the Long March. Looking back on the real experience of the Long March, he completed 12 epic poems with distinct images and sincere feelings in 3 months, "Long March Group Poems - The Red Army Is Not Afraid of Expeditions". Subsequently, composers Chen Geng, Sheng Mao, Tang Ke, Yu Qiu selected "Farewell", "Breaking through the Blockade Line", "Zunyi Meeting Shines" and other 10 composed into a group of songs, including Zunyi Conference, Four Crossings of Chishui, Flying Across the Dadu River, Crossing the Snowy Mountains and Grasslands, And Assemblies Division, and exhausted the hardships and dangers of the road. The interlocking scenes of battle life skillfully blended folk tunes from various regions with traditional songs of the Red Army, and finally converged into the "Long March Suite Song".
At that time, Ma Ziyue, who was less than 20 years old, participated in the premiere of "Long March Suite Song". For more than half a century, this great work has been integrated into Ma Ziyue's life. Ma Ziyue collected a large number of precious materials such as photos, program lists, posters and other precious materials about "Long March Suite Song", and interviewed many main creative artists. At the scene of the event, Ma Ziyue brought a precious photo. On August 24, 1965, after the performance of "Long March Suite Song" at the People's Theater, Premier Zhou took a group photo with the actors, and in Ma Ziyue's impression, it was also the only group photo taken by everyone and the premier. Unfortunately, the photograph was not published in the newspaper and the negatives were not found. It wasn't until more than thirty years later that Ma Ziyue accidentally found an old cardboard box with a musty smell in the warehouse of the literary troupe, and the old film inside had been glued together. Ma Ziyue carried the box back to the office, turned it over without a problem, and finally, he miraculously found the precious negatives that had "disappeared" for many years.
Before the death of composer Chen Geng and other creators, Ma Ziyue also took a cassette tape recorder to interview, sorting out a large number of materials and behind-the-scenes stories. For example, the four composers once reflected to General Xiao Hua that in the passage "Four Crossings of the Red Water surprise soldiers", the word "miao" of "Chairman Mao's use of soldiers is as wonderful as a god" is not easy to sing, and the general waved his pen to change it to the version that is now sung, "Chairman Mao uses soldiers as really like gods."
"When we sang the "Long March Group Song", we understood the Long March, and when we read the Long March, we also understood the original intention and mission of the Communist Party of China. This work is a classic that I have not been able to sing enough and cannot be sung in my life. Ma Ziyue said. Zhang Dawei said: "Today's young people have not experienced the difficult years of the Long March. What we can do is to inherit and carry forward, and take the long march of our own new era. ”
Next, the Series of activities of "Party History in Literary and Art Classics" of the National Centre for the Performing Arts will continue to use classic literary and artistic works to connect the century-old course of the Communist Party of China and carry forward the spirit of the Communist Party of China through the methods of artists' lectures and art exhibitions, with the idea of "works as the point, party history as the program, and spirit as the soul".
Source Beijing Daily Client | Reporter Gao Qian Fang Fei
Edited by Jin Liwei
Process Editor Wu Yue