She was the first female conductor trained in New China
She has had cancer 3 times
She is 88 years old
But she still sounded like a bell and a loud bang
Still active on the podium
She is Zheng Xiaoying, a famous conductor in China
Niu Xiaobei photo
Last night, a concert of "Earthly Songs: Zheng Xiaoying Performing Mahler and Laro" was staged at the Concert Hall of the National Centre for the Performing Arts, and we once again saw her elegance and grace, as well as her persistence and pursuit.
The first female conductor trained in New China
I think today I am the happiest person, as the first female conductor of New China, I have been envied by many female colleagues in the world.
Because I grew up with no sexism, I thank my country and my people.
——Zheng Xiaoying
Zheng Xiaoying, a Han Hakka family, was born in 1929 in a new family after the "May Fourth". She studied piano at the age of six and performed on stage at the age of fourteen, and her parents also wanted their daughter to become an independent and intellectual woman, so they sent her to the College of Arts and Sciences of Jinling Women's University in Nanjing to study, but they did not expect that their daughter had a passionate fire in her heart. In this school known as the "cradle of ladies", Zheng Xiaoying became one of the first pioneers to rush out of the school to participate in the student movement.
17-year-old Zheng Xiaoying
In the early morning of May 21, 1948, in order to protest the arrest of three progressive students by Kuomintang agents, Zheng Xiaoying carried a protest banner and walked at the forefront of the line. In the same year, she left her study life at Jinling Women's University in Nanjing and came to the Liberated Areas. "When I arrived in the Liberated Areas and learned to sing mass songs, most of the comrades did not know how to compose music, so I taught songs and beats with a little more musical knowledge than everyone else, and so I became a conductor."
One day in 1955, Zheng Xiaoying, a second-year student in the composition department of the Central Conservatory of Music, was notified by the Personnel Department and asked her to immediately go to the reception room to be interviewed by Soviet experts. It turned out that this was the Soviet choral conductor Leony Dumashev, who was not satisfied with the selection of students from the Conservatory to participate in choral conducting, and wanted to see if there were any other suitable seedlings. Zheng Xiaoying's appearance made Dumashev's eyes light up, so she became the only female student in that class.
Zheng Xiaoying (right)
This group of students in the choral conducting training class was the first group of people to systematically learn foreign conducting arts after the founding of the People's Republic of China, which had a profound impact on China's conducting education and performance, Zheng Xiaoying graduated in 1956, and then went to the founding conducting department of the Central Conservatory of Music to continue studying and teaching. In May 1961, when Zheng Xiaoying performed Beethoven's symphony "No.1", "Soviet Women" reported on it for the first time under the title of "China's first female conductor".
For the "foreign song use" still run
Earthly Song Mahler
He dismounted and poured him a glass of wine
Farewell to the wine,
And asked him where he was going?
Why can't he change everything?
He said, very painfully, answering:
My friend
The happiness of the world has nothing to do with me
Farewell to Wang Wei
Get off the horse and drink the wine,
Ask the king what he is doing.
The king is not proud,
Return to the South Mountain.
But go to Mofu ask,
When the white clouds are endless.
Looking at this text, can we see that this is a work created by the composer Gustav Mahler based on the translation of Tang poetry? At that time, these poems traveled across the ocean and healed Mahler, who had suffered many tribulations. Now, under the swing of Zheng Xiaoying's stick, they have returned to China and sung to thousands of Chinese. Moreover, it is in the form of Chinese.
The gentle band and female voice sometimes present a melancholy autumn day and the tired mood of the wanderer, and the continuous bass and oboe of the tuba also occasionally lead to the lonely theme of the mezzo-soprano. Accompanied by prose poems like Chinese singing sections, "Earthly Song" is played in the concert hall, And Li Bai's "Picking Lotus Songs", "Spring Drunken Speech", Wang Wei's "Farewell" and other works are still faintly visible.
Composer Mahler
At that time, Mahler loved his daughter to die prematurely, but also found that he suffered from heart disease, suffered multiple blows, Mahler suddenly read several translated Chinese Tang poems, Chinese poets' feelings and poetry aroused his strong resonance, so there is this touching masterpiece.
It is not uncommon for Chinese orchestras to interpret the original version of "Earthly Song", but only Zheng Xiaoying has insisted on putting it on the stage in the form of a Chinese version for many years. "Singing foreign operas and vocal works with Chinese, I know it's an anti-trend thing, and it's all popular and authentic now." Zheng Xiaoying suddenly asked back: "But with Chinese, aren't the people more able to appreciate the wonderful features of music?" ”
In the 1980s, she led the troupe to Tianjin to perform the opera "La Traviata", performing 39 times in a row, with Chinese and the venue was full. Zheng Xiaoying was shocked by the applause and applause of the audience, and since then, the seeds of "use in foreign songs" have been deeply planted in her heart.
In order to let the audience hear the Chinese version of "Earthly Song", since 2012, Zheng Xiaoying has begun to Chinese lyrics for its original version. "It is too difficult to match the lyrics, the sentence accent and the musical accent must be matched, and the Chinese dialect has four voices, and the syntax and music must be consistent to listen." Zheng Xiaoying, who is over eighty years old, has revised the lyrics countless times, "I also think when I sleep, and I often feel that another version is better when I sleep."
A few years later, this year's Zheng Xiaoying is 88 years old. With silver hair, she stood on the stage of the National Centre for the Performing Arts, wielding her baton powerfully, directing the orchestra and singers to sing the work with Chinese. When the curtain fell on the performance and heard the heartfelt applause of the audience, Zheng Xiaoying knew that they understood Mahler, and they also understood the composer's interpretation of Li Bai and Wang Wei...
If I'm dull, I don't bother the audience's ears
Say that if one day you can fall on the podium,
That's the most romantic.
Looking at Zheng Xiaoying's spirit on the stage, it is difficult to guess that she is 88 years old, and it is difficult to see that she has been diagnosed with cancer three times. People say that she is the "desperate three ladies" of the music industry, she runs for music all year round, and music also gives her the power to wield the stick.
Yesterday morning, the orchestra rehearsed, and Zheng Xiaoying and the orchestra gossiped. Speaking of a performance in recent years, some audience members wet the ground because of the flowers, Zheng Xiaoying did not see it, stepped on it, and as a result, slid directly from the edge of the stage to the stage.
"The orchestra and the audience screamed, presumably they all thought, 'Finish, this old lady hasn't fallen to pieces yet.'" But I stood up and didn't feel anything, and continued to point, haha! "Hearing that it was a false alarm, the members of the orchestra also laughed." But the next day I got up, I couldn't get it, my whole body hurt, and it hurt for more than a month. Zheng Xiaoying said, "It must be because I was so excited at the time, I didn't feel it." ”
Listening to the old lady's ridiculous tone, it really didn't look like she was talking about her own business, in her own words, "I am such a disregarded character." In fact, from the 1990s to the present, Zheng Xiaoying has been diagnosed with cancer three times, and has also undergone surgery and radiation therapy. Before one operation, she asked the doctor, "Can I still command after that?" Hearing the doctor say "yes," she felt that the words gave her "great encouragement."
Until now, she still wields her baton vigorously on the podium. It is said that a few years ago, Zheng Xiaoying held a performance conference in Xiamen, and she was eighty years old and walked in front of her, and a group of reporters behind her could not keep up. In the rehearsal yesterday morning, the music marched to the sixth movement of "Earthly Song", "Farewell", and Zheng Xiaoying, who was directing the orchestra, suddenly turned her head and said aloud to the staff of the side curtain: "Here, the subtitles add the word 'funeral music'." "That full of vigor, it was as loud as a bell."
Zheng Xiaoying, who walked off the stage to rest, wiped the beads of sweat on her forehead with a white handkerchief from time to time. But as soon as someone came to her and said, "Teacher Zheng, I have been a fan of yours for 50 years, and I listened to your lectures back then", Zheng Xiaoying's eyes instantly narrowed into a slit, and her face also smiled. "I'm not working hard in vain, I'm here just to share what I know with the audience, how nice!"
The elderly who will soon enter the "post-90s" are not thinking about retirement, but are always "observing" themselves: Is the reaction on the stage slow? "Opera and concertos are very sensitive to conducting, and you can decide on the orchestra alone, but operas and concertos especially test the conductor's reaction." Zheng Xiaoying said, "When rehearsing, you can tell the performers to hurry up and slow down, but you can only cooperate with them on the stage, and you can't take care of yourself." If I'm dull, I shouldn't disturb the audience's ears. ”
- end -
The 88-year-old Zheng Xiaoying can still be persistent
Suppose you reach the age of 88
What do you wish you were like?
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Author and Editor of this issue: Han Xuan
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