Two Pianists, One Star Rises, the Other Falls

Liu stands after his winning performance in Warsaw

 

Just as a new piano star is crowned, another has fallen in disgrace.

On October 21, Bruce Xiaoyu Liu of Montreal, Canada was named the winner of the prestigious 18th Frederic Chopin piano competition that comes with 40,000 euro (US$45,000) in prize money in Warsaw, Poland.

The 24-year-old who was born in France, is taking the big win in stride, though he hopes he can continue his "hobby", because he doesn't want piano playing to become something he has to do out of obligation.

He beat out 86 other young pianists around the world to clinch first prize in the competition that is only held every five years, but was delayed last year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Liu knows his career will accelerate from now on

During the competition Liu wowed the audience with his interpretation of the Piano Concerto No. 1 in E Minor, Op. 11. Even before the last notes were played the people, many of them music critics and Chopin experts, shouted and clapped, impressed by his intense playing. He says the performance was a blur and he didn't get much sleep before the competition.

When asked how he will celebrate his win, Liu said he didn't have time to think about it because he will be going on tour and it will be a while before he returns to Montreal. 

Nevertheless he seems to be taking it all in stride.

Liu describes his victory as a "life-changing event", and knows his career is about to accelerate and he is "ready for it".

But on the opposite end of the spectrum is well known pianist Li Yundi, who was reportedly caught with a prostitute in Beijing.

The news broke on the same evening of October 21 with police reporting they had detained a 39-year-old pianist surnamed Li on suspicion of patronizing a 29-year-old prostitute in the Chinese capital. 

Li also won the Chopin competition in 2000

Cryptically the police posted a picture of a keyboard with a message: "The world is not simply black and white, but one must distinguish black and white. It must never be mistaken."

Li rose to fame in 2000 when he won the Frederic Chopin competition at the age of 18. However, in recent years he has moved away from serious classical music performances and more towards entertainment shows in China.

Later a police statement did not specify how long Li would be detained, but according to Chinese law, soliciting prostitution is illegal and typically leads to administrative detention of between 10 and 15 days. It could be reduced to five days or fewer if the circumstances of the offence are minor.

However, the damage has already been done and the fallout begun -- the "prince of the piano" has been boycotted and numerous organizations have cut ties with Li, including the China Musicians Association, the Sichuan Conservatory of Music, and Mango TV, where he was part of a televised talent show named Call Me By Fire.

Esteemed China law expert Jerome Cohen questions why Li was singled out when so many others solicit the services of prostitutes but aren't prosecuted.

Li detained for allegedly soliciting a prostitute

"Did he offend a leader by some remarks of a political or personal nature? Was he 'set up' for this charge? Can one be confident that the facts alleged are true? Is this the use of the police as an instrument of revenge by some powerful person? Is this simply a part of the current campaign to transform and 'purify' the entertainment and other industries? Will Li be allowed to leave the country after serving his punishment to pursue his career abroad? That seems unlikely," Cohen writes in his blog.

"Prostitution is such a time-honoured Communist Party claim against political opponents that one has to be suspicious of this case. In any event, the manner by which the police have made the matter public only adds to the unsavoury story."

We will have to wait to see the fate of Li, while we hope to one day watch Liu's performance in person.

 

 

Remembering Fu Ts'ong and Other News

Fou Ts'ong was a well known expert in playing Chopin

An update on what happened today before getting to my main post today: 

Student activist Tony Chung Hon-lam was sentenced to four months in jail for defiling the Chinese national flag;

Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai Chee-ying has resigned as chairman of parent company Next Digital to focus more on personal affairs;

The 12 Hong Kong activists who were detained at sea for allegedly trying to escape to Taiwan by speedboat will hear their fate on Wednesday morning;

Citizen journalist and lawyer Zhang Zhan was sentenced to four years in prison for "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" for her fearless reporting in Wuhan during the height of the pandemic. She refused to cooperate with the so-called "investigation" and went on a hunger strike, and the authorities tied her hands and forced a feeding tube down her  nose;

And Hong Kong recorded 53 new cases today, but still 14 of them have unknown sources which is worrying.

Fou made London his home since 1958

This afternoon came the sad news that renowned Chinese pianist Fou Ts'ong passed away of Covid-19 in London. He was 86 years old.

I feel so privileged to see him perform in Beijing in December 2007 and my account of the concert is here.

He was very passionate about Chopin, and is considered a master in interpreting the Polish composer. In this nine-minute video you can see his enthusiasm for Chopin, and he elucidates his reason for loving his music so much.

"And I always said it always takes a genius to understand genius. Ordinary people always try to pull the genius down to their level, they don't understand the composer. There are a lot of imitators but nobody is Chopin. He is unique," he says in the video.

Zhu Meifu, Fou Lei

However, one has to think of the life Fou has been through for him to be able to interpret Chopin so beautifully. Fou's life has been full of success and praise, but also tragedy and pain.

He was born in 1934 in Shanghai and studied piano at a young age under Western pianists before winning a scholarship to the Warsaw Conservatory after taking third prize in the 5th International Chopin Competition in 1955.

Fou was the son of Fou Lei, a well-known French translator of Honore de Balzac, Romain Rollard, Voltaire, and Andre Gide. 

While the younger Fou made London his base in 1958, his father was concerned about him being so far from home and began writing letters to him -- almost 200 of them -- which were later compiled into a book called Home Letters by Fu Lei and published in 1981. 

However in 1958 Fou Lei and his wife Zhu Meifu were labelled rightists in the Anti-Rightist movement, and by 1966 when the Cultural Revolution began in full swing, both parents committed suicide.

It wasn't until 1979 after the end of the Cultural Revolution could Fou Ts'ong return to China to mourn them, and a year later gave his first concert there in over 20 years.

Fou Lei's letters to his son

Fou's personal life is interesting. In 1960 he married Zamira Menuhin, the daughter of Yehudi Menuhin, and they had one son; they divorced in 1969. Later he married Hijong Hyun, a daughter of South Korea's ambassador to Morocco that later ended in divorce.

Then he married London-based, Chinese-born pianist Patsy Toh. Sadly she was hospitalized with the coronavirus as well and tragically could not be with Fou before he died.

Watching his videos now, I wish I had an opportunity to speak with him. Musicians and artists are so passionate about their craft, and they are so keen on sharing their love of it with others. 

Fou's energy talking about Chopin five years ago shows his admiration for the composer has hardly waned;  he was still trying to understand what Chopin wrote, after decades of playing those pieces over and over again.

He is so lucky to pursue his love of music to the utmost and make it his mission to disseminate what he knows to others.

Judging from the social media posts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram today, many are sad to hear of Fou's passing. We will all miss him dearly.

Chinese and Polish Docs Looking for Hope

Photo of Tereska, a Polish Jew in an orphanage taken in 1948

The inaugural Hong Kong International Documentary Festival is on and I caught my colleague's short film called Gone With the Policy.

In 2017 the Beijing government wanted to keep the capital city's population under control and shave a  million or two people off the census. The easiest people to remove? Migrant workers and their children.

A migrant school in Beijing is slated for demolition ("chai")

It was heartbreaking to watch the scene of a migrant school in Chang Ping district, in the outskirts of Beijing being knocked down and the pile of rubble was still left there months later.

The principal of the school was keen to find another space and set up another school, having taught for 10 years. But by the time he secured the space and moved the desks and other furniture there, many families had left -- some even overnight -- which resulted in only four students signing up.

Unfortunately the principal had to admit defeat, while his subordinate, the vice principal wistfully remembers how the original school they had grew and how can the government deny these students an education? He hints at economic prejudices against them.

Students enjoying school, before it is torn down

Meanwhile a migrant worker in Beijing brings his two children, who were born in the city, back to his hometown. The older daughter seems shell shocked at the reality of having to make a new life in the countryside, where her grandmother doesn't understand what laundry detergent is, and wondering how she will continue her education, let alone get into university.

The vice principal points out many of the students' parents built the Bird's Nest for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, but they also built much of Beijing as well. And what do they get for their contribution? Being shoved out of the city.

While the documentary is a bit rough around the edges, it is an important piece of evidence that documents the plight of migrant workers, who otherwise don't have much  of a voice in Chinese society let alone history.

Two people try to track down Tereska in old photos

The other film presented was called Searching for Tereska, a Polish documentary that has some fictional scenes in it.

In 1948, a Magnum photographer David Seymour took a haunting picture of a young girl with a bow in her hair. She is standing by the blackboard with a mass of circles she has drawn and a disturbed look on her face.

Fast forward to today, and a young man wants to find out who this girl is and if she is still alive. He enlists the help of a woman who seems very resourceful and determined, very much like a reporter.

They are warned at first by a group of Jews that they may not find the person, but on their journey they will meet many people. The latter was for sure. Their first clue was that she wrote her name, Tereska at the top of the black board. That was it.

Through some sleuthing they identify the building and from there go to a Jewish Centre that deals with survivors, a woman there believes the girl in the picture is her friend and so the couple meet her, but she is the wrong Tereska.

The poster for Searching for Tereska

And then they tracked down what they think is the building but the nun won't let them inside. They also try to find who they think is Tereska but it leads to a tombstone. They leave a note there, hoping someone will contact them, and the grandson does.

However, when he brings out a picture of his grandmother in her younger years, she doesn't look like the girl in the picture.

Then they hit upon a school and find very old registration records and even get copies of the contact sheets of the photographs David Seymour took. They get in touch with various experts to identify the school Tereska was in or where the building was located.

Finally the woman who showed them the school registration records realizes that perhaps because of her disturbed mental state, Tereska did not graduate with her grade, but after, which leads to a massive clue to help track her down...

At first I didn't know what was going on in the story, but as it kept going on, you as a viewer become more invested in the story and wonder if they will ever find an ending to their search (which they do). It makes you realize how important records are and that when buildings are torn down, memories and information are lost forever. And not just buildings, but people too, when they pass away.

But Tereska isn't the only one who was lost. There are thousands of other people who may not have been accounted for. Will anyone find them?



 

Polish Jazz in Hong Kong

Maciej Fortuna is a trumpeter, composer, music producer with an MA in Law!

The 46th HK Arts Festival is on and I've only got tickets to two shows! My friend YTSL has to remind me to look through the catalogue and then it's overwhelming...

One of the shows I picked on a whim was the theme of nouveau jazz and I'm glad I did.

What is it about the Polish and jazz? When I was in Beijing I heard Andrzej Jagodzinski and his group do jazzy riffs off of Chopin that was so cool and now this group, Maciej Fortuna Special Quartet in Hong Kong and they were fantastic.


Maciej Fortuna Special Quartet from Fortuna Music on Vimeo.

Held at Shouson Theatre in the Hong Kong Arts Centre, it was a nice intimate space for this kind of performance. There was free seating so I tried to arrive a bit earlier, but there was no problem getting a decent seat -- they were all good.

It turns out the group plays electronica jazz, something I haven't heard before and the sounds were pretty neat. There was a pianist (Andrzej Konieczny), a bassist (Roman Chraniuk), a drummer (Jakub Miarcznski) and the leader, Maciej Fortuna on trumpet.

The Maciej Fortuna Special Quartet

For example the trumpet was attached to a wire that was linked to some switchboard that Fortuna used to create new sounds coming from his instrument that didn't sound much like a trumpet but like an electric guitar.

When the bass was attached to an amp, it also made groovy sounds like a fuzzy plucked electric guitar. And then at times the pianist would go behind the piano and start playing on the second set of drums. One would think it would be too much, but they created so much energy, feeding off each other like a drum duel.

The dynamics between the members was great -- they riffed off of each other, kept the beat going and most importantly enjoyed themselves on stage. The freedom they have to express themselves is what makes jazz so interesting to watch and listen.

Andrzej Jagodzinski Trio plays Chopin with a jazz twist

Towards the end of the 90-minute show, Fortuna explained he had played here before, though some of his band members hadn't, and they enjoyed performing here immensely. He mistakenly said "Here in China" and then said, "I mean Hong Kong". He said the slight was similar to him performing in Iceland and then saying to the audience "In continental Europe..."

We forgave him and clapped loudly enough for them to do an encore. What a blast.

Maciej Fortuna Special Quartet

March 4, 2018

Shouson Theatre, Hong Kong Arts Centre