Still hanging out in Hangzhou
What about the music, though? Well, you know how I'm always going on about the 'what is it', and 'why on earth do we do it' of music. Tours are grist to this particular mill. We've done three programmes now, over four nights. Nicola Benedetti has done Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending three times as a sort of savoury sorbet after her Mendelssohn or Sibelius. I thought this was a great choice for China; it's nature music, which they're heavily into here, and it's full of the pentatonic sounds , these are made with the black note scale which you hear in a film whenever they want to tell you, "We're in China now, folks". In Beijing and Shanghai The Lark didn't work, despite Nicola's ravishing playing. It has long, very quiet bits, where the lark disappears up into the sunlight and the whole world seems to stop in a blur of heat haze. I love it. They coughed and fidgeted. Then, last night, in Hangzhou, they really listened – I don't think there was one cough during the lingering evaporation bit at the end. What happened that was different? What do we (that's you) as an audience bring to a performance that will make it a unique experience – for our self and for anyone else in the hall with us? If you'd been in Shanghai you'd have thought, 'this is duff'; and if you'd been in Hangzhou you'd have thought, 'this is great'. My first guess was, 'they don't do stasis here'. Their nature music is beautiful, but it tends to bubble and burble like a brook, and flitter and dance like a butterfly. Blink, and they've finished the job and are onto the next thing – if you'll forgive me the shallow generalisation. I wouldn't want to have to sell Bruckner's music here. The boring answer is that we all obviously hear each piece of music through our own particular sieve – of experiences, familiarities, prejudices, temperament, and mood of the day – to name but a few. But, before you start shuggling that sieve, what are those ingredients that we share, that we share across all cultures and reaching down to the deepest roots of our common humanity? You'll be relieved to hear that I'm not going to try to answer that – just now, anyway.
Here in Hangzhou (and 'here' is going to be 'there' in Suchou before I get this finished) we had a few laughs on stage. They like their music here. We were in a ginormous well used opera house, liberally adorned with pictures of past opera productions and their stars. The audience call bell is a great long ponderous set of chimes, and the guy pressing the button for it really likes his job. Whatever the first piece, at the beginning or after the interval, we had to listen to it – all the way through – just before playing. On the second night rather more players than might be good for decorum started playing along with and harmonising the chimes – those players that weren't already corpsing. I hope our hosts weren't offended! Nicola had just finished the Sibelius (you know it? – big flourish, all our arms up in the air) and turned round to start for the wings, expecting to return for several curtain calls, and the house lights were up and the interval announcements had started. Even worse: up until the start, and immediately after the final clapping had finished, they played Chinese muzak over the tannoy. You could be all of a jitter in anticipation before the performance, or in a daze of rapture after it – you would have to manage to sieve out that muzak. As I sit here in my room, I have to sieve out Chinese muzak that is playing in the corridor outside – and has been since early each morning.
Anthony
