The Paper's reporter Liao Yang
"It has been thirty years since I came to Shanghai from Sichuan, and I have never been out of the gate of No. 20 Fenyang Road of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, and I grew up under the nourishment of Shanghai." Liao Changyong said.
On November 7th, Liao Changyong, dean of Shanghai Conservatory of Music, visited The Blackstone m+ Park to conclude the second season of Wutong Mingjiahui. Along with them, there were many students of Liao Changyong, including young teachers of Shangyin, as well as doctoral students and graduate students.
"Three Wishes of Roses", "Song of Resistance", "Jialing River", "Lover Sends Me Sunflowers", "Langtaosha Beidaihe"... Accompanied by the piano, Chinese art songs floated out of the scene, and Liao Changyong also emotionally talked about the subtleties of Chinese art songs.
At the same time, Liao Changyong sent a message to young people that traffic and art are not contradictory, "Traffic is a 'double-edged sword'." If you love and care for it, this sword will be the help of your career, if you are proud and complacent and lower your requirements for yourself, this sword will hurt you. ”
I didn't expect Chinese music to be so beautiful
"An opera can take three hours to tell a story, while an art song tells a story in just one minute, two minutes or three minutes, which is very condensed."
Liao Changyong has always had a special love for art songs. In vocal music, art songs are a very special category, strong in literature, high requirements for lyrics, usually composed with poetry, music and poetry are not comparable, no distinction between top and bottom.
In the past, Liao Changyong always envied his colleagues in Germany, France and Italy, they all sang their own art songs, and there were no Chinese works in the repertoire of the Chinese, even if they sang, the judges could not understand and could not score, "At that time, I wondered when we would be able to have Chinese works in international competitions or the performance seasons of foreign orchestras." ”
In 1997, Liao Changyong won the "Norwegian Queen Songya International Vocal Competition". Since then, whenever he has held solo concerts abroad, more than 1/3 of his works in the repertoire are Chinese art songs. Chinese art songs began to be frequently taken overseas by Liao Changyong.
In January 2019, Liao Changyong sang Chinese art songs to Switzerland under the name of "Classical Chinese Poetry and Calligraphy". Liao Changyong sang 16 classical Chinese poetry art songs, and he also invited Wang Jiafang and Ding Xiaofang to create 16 calligraphy works, 16 paintings, and 2 porcelain works, which opened a dialogue between poetry, painting and music, which attracted a lot of amazement.
Soon, Liao Changyong opened this concert in Austria and Germany, each of which was fully packed, and the audience in every place was beyond imagination, "They did not expect that Chinese music is so beautiful, Chinese Chinese is so beautiful, Chinese painting is so beautiful, chinese calligraphy is so beautiful." ”
It was during the German performance that Liao Changyong's singing touched Nick Fificken, president of the German Big Bear Music Publishing House, and sowed the seeds of future cooperation.
After several years of meticulous planning, in October this year, under the joint promotion of both sides, "Three Wishes of Roses: 16 Chinese Art Songs" was officially published by Big Bear Publishing House and released to the world. In addition to using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) Zhuyin, Liao Changyong also participated in the recording of Chinese recitations of the lyrics, providing optimal pronunciation assistance for non-native speakers of the Chinese. With this good textbook in hand, foreign singers want to sing Chinese songs in a straight and round way, and it is completely fine.
In addition, Liao Changyong has also held the "Centenary of Chinese Art Songs" concert in Shanghai Spring for many consecutive years, planned the "Centennial International Art Week of Chinese Art Songs", and promoted the "International Vocal Competition of Chinese Art Songs" as a reserved event of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music to be held every two years.
Liao Changyong still remembers that when he wanted to make Chinese art songs more than a decade ago, everyone's reaction was not very strong, and in recent years, under the vigorous promotion of the music industry, more and more singers, composers, experts and scholars have joined in the promotion, creation and research of Chinese art songs.
Convince your foreign counterparts
In addition to art songs, opera is also a major battlefield for Liao Changyong, who is a baritone.
Opera is the jewel in the crown of art, but for many audiences, there are many obstacles to getting close to opera.
"Listening to opera starts with arias." Liao Changyong suggested, for example, in the opera "Jani Sskiki", everyone is most familiar with the soprano aria "Oh, my dear father", in the musical "Cat", everyone is most impressed by "Memories", "Through the aria into the opera world, you can deeply feel its connotation and essence." ”
Chinese singing the arias of Western opera, what is the hardest part?
"The first is the cultural background, the opera of different periods, from baroque, classicism, romanticism to modern and contemporary, the musical style is different."
"The second is language, after all, Western opera is not our mother tongue, you can't just hyphenate and change breath... The language should be accurate, the musical style should be accurate, the emotional expression should be accurate, and after they are accurate, foreign counterparts will be convinced of you. ”
The Italian opera The Barber of Seville is a reserved play by Liao Changyong. One year in the foreign competition, Liao Changyong sang one of the excerpts, stepped down to find several Italian staff members in tears, he also thought that the people they liked were brushed off, rushed forward to comfort, "The result is that the other party said, you sang too well, your heart is broken, every word we understand, every word expresses the emotion is extremely accurate, we were touched by you." ”
Speaking of this, Liao Changyong remembered the teachings of his mentor Zhou Xiaoyan: To convince foreigners of the foreign songs you sing, and also to let Chinese like the Chinese songs you sing, and you cannot sing Chinese songs abroad and mongolian foreigners, nor can you sing foreign songs at home to Chinese.
Many people listen to the soprano and are eager to show off their skills to the roof and overturn. At the scene of the event, Liao Changyong's student and lyrical flower soprano Zhang Tianyang presented a song "Three Wishes of Roses", without showmanship, emotional introverted, but sang to people's hearts.
"Many people misunderstand that bel canto is a 'beautiful voice', in fact, it is 'beautiful singing', first of all, the singer is required to have a good technique, without good technology, you can not complete a difficult work."
Liao Changyong said that singers usually spend a lot of time on voice training, so that the voice has always been kept in a high-quality state, which is the technical guarantee for singing a good song, but singing is not only technical support, but also requires deep humanistic cultivation.
"You can't sing all the songs in one voice, it's boring, it's boring. The so-called 'silk is not as good as bamboo, bamboo is not as good as meat', the sound of the meat voice is the richest, there are warm and cool tones, there are light and loud, there are fast and slow, will change with anger, happiness, melancholy, resentment and other emotional changes, a period of progression. It is the most flexible instrument. Liao Changyong laughed and said that when he used to fall in love with his wife, he often rode a bicycle and sang various songs to her.
Get out of the ivory tower and variety show
Nowadays, in variety shows such as "Sound into People's Hearts" and "The Voice of China", you can often see Liao Changyong's figure. In this regard, some people wonder, as the dean of a serious music school, why did Liao Changyong go out of the ivory tower to participate in variety shows?
"For me, art has no high or low, no boundaries. There are also many works that wear the sheep's clothing of classical music but are not very good, and there are many good works in popular music. We have a lot to learn from each other and learn from each other. Liao Changyong laughed and said that he is not so old, he can still run, why not see more through his own eyes, absorb more, and the same frequency of the times, resonate with young people, jointly discuss the advantages and disadvantages of art, and jointly achieve artistic prosperity?
The more important reason is that after becoming the dean, Liao Changyong's focus on the perspective is different from being a teacher and a singer, they can only focus on the profession, but the dean should know the artistic planning of the entire college, to find the pulse of the times of industry changes, after participating in the program, he can expand the circle of friends, bring many excellent musicians and technicians into the circle of friends, and jointly contribute to the construction of emerging disciplines in the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.
"Classical music has been moving forward, and there are many categories of popular music, soul, blues, rap... I can't fight it because I'm academic. The wheel of the times is rolling forward, we can only embrace, embrace the world, embrace the future, and compose excellent literary and artistic works worthy of contemporary times. ”
"In the past, everyone's understanding of opera and musical theater was relatively one-sided, but after the appearance of "Sound into People's Hearts", everyone found that the boys of the original opera and musical theater were so talented, not only talented, but also beautiful, and very hardworking."
Liao Changyong still remembers that after the end of the first season of "Sound into People's Hearts", the number of applicants for the Shanghai Conservatory of Music rose from one thousand to three thousand, and the next year from three thousand to six thousand, and the number of applicants for one department of vocal music alone was two thousand. ”
As for "The Voice of China", Liao Changyong is frank, he first of all with a learning attitude, "I don't know much about pop music, but I hope to find common ground and see how academic and pop music are integrated." ”
Does art and entertainment have to be clearly demarcated? In Liao Changyong's view, traffic and art are not incompatible.
"Now we have a lot of outstanding artists who are super traffic, and their traffic is exchanged for their art." Therefore, he sent a message to young people in "Sound into People's Hearts", "Traffic is a 'double-edged sword'." If you love and care for it, this sword will be the help of your career, if you are proud and complacent and lower your requirements for yourself, this sword will hurt you. Therefore, we must take every step steadily, and the flow will be long-lasting. ”
Editor-in-Charge: Chen Shihuai
Proofreader: Yan Zhang