China News Service, Moscow, December 12 (Xinhua) -- "China" in Russian music

Author Zuo Zhenguan Honored Artist of Russia, Director of the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra

The English poet Rudyard Kipling once said, "The East is the East, the West is the West, and the two sides will never meet." "However, the Eastern civilization and the Western civilization are still close face to face and have a dialogue. Music plays a big role in this.

Since the 18th century, the culture of Eastern countries (such as China, Japan, and Arab countries) has attracted the attention of Western writers, philosophers, architects, artists, and composers. From curiosity to interest, from communication to research, they have created a new crystallization that integrates the two cultures on the soil of the two cultures, adding new perspectives, new values and aesthetics to the world civilization, so that the world becomes more colorful.

As a neighbor of China, Chinese culture has always attracted the attention of the Russian cultural elite. In the course of his association with the monk who had been a missionary in China, Pushkin had a desire to travel to China; In his later years, Tolstoy was deeply interested in Chinese philosophy. In the 19th century, there were a number of works related to China in the field of Russian music, the most famous being "Chinese Dance" (or "Tea") in Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker. But few people know that as early as 1859, the Russian composer Guy wrote the opera "The Son of the Manchurian", which is close to the style of French operetta. But apart from the names and costumes of the characters, they have very little in common with real China. In the same way, when we enjoy Tchaikovsky's "Chinese Dance", we don't feel that it has anything to do with China and Chinese music.

On the evening of February 2004, 2, a candlelight concert was held in Beijing on a romantic night for Valentine's Day, in which Russian artists played the world-famous song "The Nutcracker". Photo by Sheng Jiapeng

At the beginning of the 20th century, Western composers began to pay attention to the folklore of Chinese music, as well as melody, rhythm, tonality, and key. In the first 20 years of the 25th century, many great musical works with Chinese elements emerged in Europe. It is hard to imagine that there is no Mahler's symphony "Song of the Earth", Puccini's opera "Turandot", Stravinsky's opera "The Nightingale", Bartók's ballet "The Magical Manchurian" in the world musical heritage, and other musical works composed by Western composers related to Chinese themes or images of China. Without them, the treasure trove of human musical culture would lose much of its luster.

The success of the October Revolution had a profound impact on China. The Soviet Union began to pay attention to and sympathize with China's national liberation movement, and there was a lot of coverage of the Chinese revolutionary movement at that time, which also led to the emergence of a series of China-related musical works in the Soviet Union. Among them, the works of the master composer Sergei Vasilenko are the first to be introduced, and his works such as "Chinese Suite" and "Chinese Folk Song Tune Suite" are composed on the basis of original Chinese folk tunes. On the basis of the traditional Chinese pentatonic scale, the melody uses the harmony of Western music, a variety of polyphony and other techniques, but the work inherits the tradition of 19th-century Russian music. The musicologist Zhytomirsky called such works (such as Rimsky Korsakov's "Arabian Nights" and Borodin's "On the Steppes of Central Asia and West Asia") "exotic romanticism".

On the evening of November 2023, 11, the special performance of the Russian Chinese Cultural Festival - "Picturesque Rivers and Mountains" national concert was held in the new theater of the Bolshoi Theater. Photo by Tian Bing

In 1927, the ballet "Red Poppies" by the famous Soviet composer Reinhold Grière appeared on the stage of the Bolshoi Theatre. As the first modern original ballet in the Soviet Union, it completely overturned the usual theme of the original classic ballet, and also added unexpected "Chinese elements".

In the play, the composer choreographed the foxtrot and Charles Deng dances that conform to the characteristics of the times, but the main position in the play is more than a dozen dances with Chinese elements, such as "Golden Finger Dance", "Peach Blossom Solo Dance", "Umbrella Dance", "Bowl Dance", "Red Ribbon Dance", "Coolie Dance", etc., which greatly enhance the watchability of the ballet and make it more colorful. In the four years since its premiere at the Bolshoi Theatre, the play has been staged more than 300 times in a row with unprecedented success. Following in the footsteps of Moscow, the Leningrad Kirov Opera and Ballet Theatre (now the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg) and the Sverdlovsk Opera and Ballet Theatre (Yekaterinburg State Opera and Ballet Theatre, now known as the Ural Opera and Ballet Theatre) also staged Red Poppies. The show was also well received in the United States and several European countries.

On the evening of June 2023, 6, the ballet "Swan Lake" rehearsed by the Russian Royal Ballet Theater was staged at the Zunyi Grand Theater in Xinpu New District, Zunyi City, Guizhou Province. The ballet "Swan Lake" has come to China many times to meet the audience. Photo by Qu Honglun

Interest in the ballet continues unabated in Russia. In recent years, new versions (the fourth version) of this ballet have been staged in the cities of Krasnoyarsk and Rostov in Siberia. Russian media reported that the Mariinsky Theater is also preparing to bring the play back to the stage.

During this period, the Russian composers Avshalomov and Alexander Zilpin, who lived and worked in China, created a series of "Chinese works", thus forming a deep connection with Chinese music culture. They not only created a large number of works with Chinese themes and images, but also greatly influenced Chinese music creation, and provided useful inspiration for Chinese composers with their experience in the integration of traditional Chinese music and Western music. Thanks to a deep understanding of traditional Chinese music culture, these two composers completely broke away from the influence of "exoticism" or "Western European romanticism" and wrote musical works with the essence of Chinese culture. Most of the works created by Afshalomov in China, including symphonies, operas, ballets, etc., can be considered truly "Chinese works". He is fully qualified to be called a "Chinese composer". More than a dozen of Qi Erpin's more than 100 works are related to China. His Third Symphony is known as the "Chinese Symphony", although it is not named "China" on its published score and CD.

On September 9, the first Sino-Russian local culture and art season street roadshow in Heilongjiang Province was held in the music corridor. The performer plays "As Wished" on the violin. The musical and cultural exchanges between China and Russia are extensive and in-depth. Photo by Zhao Yu

In the 20s of the 50th century, the Soviet Union translated and published four masterpieces of Chinese classical literature and a series of ancient Chinese philosophical masterpieces, as well as works that introduced Chinese music, such as "Chinese Music Culture" and "Composer Xian Xinghai", and the most popular among Soviet readers were Tang poems. Names such as Li Bai, Du Fu, and Wang Wei were no stranger in the Soviet Union for a long time - in fact, Russian translations of classical Chinese poetry appeared during the Tsarist period, and the names of the authors of Tang and Song poems were widely circulated. In 1957, the Soviet Union published the four-volume Collected Chinese Poetry. In 1962, to commemorate the 1250th anniversary of Du Fu's birth, the Soviet Union published a collection of Du Fu's poems translated by Gidovich, containing a total of 140 poems.

For a long time, a large number of Chinese poems with a high artistic level of Russian translation have opened up a whole new spiritual world for Russian readers, and also greatly promoted the willingness of Russian composers to compose musical works based on Chinese poems, and a large number of related vocal works have appeared.

Georgy Sviridov's "Song of the Walker" is composed with poems by Wang Wei, Pei Di, Bai Juyi, He Zhizhang and other poets. The composer did not "decorate" the work with elements of Chinese music, but entirely based on his own intuition and inspiration for Chinese poetry.

When Edison Denisov was a student at the Moscow Conservatory, he composed a collection of vocal works "Nocturne" based on Bai Juyi's poems. The reason why he fell in love with classical Chinese poetry can be represented by many Russian composers, that is, classical Chinese poetry gives people a novel feeling: he can be a prosaic spectator, observe the world and nature with a poetic eye, and listen to the sounds of nature. In other words, composers can appreciate the concept of "the unity of heaven and man" in traditional Chinese philosophical thought, and feel Chinese's understanding of the relationship between man and nature, man and society, and man and himself.

N. Sidernikov believes that Du Fu's poems are ahead of their time, and that poems written more than a thousand years ago resonate today. His choral collection "Sichuan Tragedy" does not deliberately add Chinese elements to the music, but more can experience the Russian choral music tradition. He wrote in the description of the work, "Why did I use Du Fu's poems to create "Sichuan Tragedy"? Because his poems have a deep connotation that belongs to all mankind. Du Fuzu is comparable to Michelangelo and Shakespeare, and belongs to all eras and people of all nationalities in the world. ”

On the evening of December 2013, 12, an acrobatic ballet "The Nutcracker" premiered at the Pasadena Municipal Theater in Los Angeles. Photo by Mao Jianjun

In recent years, with the increasing frequency of cultural exchanges between China and Russia, the interest of the Russian people in Chinese culture has continued to grow. The symphony "Silk Road" by the St. Petersburg composer V. Pleshak testifies to this. It was inspired by the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, which the composer visited. The symphony consists of 9 movements and is 70 minutes long. Chinese instruments such as pipa, erhu and sheng are used in the work. In 2018, this work by Plešak was premiered during the <>rd Silk Road (Dunhuang) International Cultural Fair. The sincere cooperation between the artists of the two countries illustrates the profound connotation of mutual learning and integration between Chinese and foreign cultures.

At the same time, the image of Russian culture also frequently appears in the creations of Chinese composers, such as the original opera "The Dawn Is Quiet Here" at the National Centre for the Performing Arts of China, and the musical "Emotional Harbin" created and rehearsed by the Harbin Opera House. The author believes that in this era, the mutual exchange of cultures will show a more positive development trend in the creation of Chinese and Russian composers. (ENDS)

Interviewee Profile:

Zuo Zhenguan, a famous Russian-Chinese composer, joined the Union of Soviet Composers in 1978. Zuo Zhenguan has won many awards in the All-Union/Russian and International Composition Competitions, and has composed a large number of orchestral music, chamber music, musicals, ballet music, children's music, film music and Russian folk instrumental music. In 1992 he founded the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra, and in 1993 he joined the "Russian Music and XXI Century Club". In 2007, he composed the ballet "Little River Flowing Water", which was performed dozens of times in Russia and China. Zuo Zhenguan has published more than 50 academic articles on Russian-Chinese music, and is the author of "Russian Musicians in China" and other books. In 1999, then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed a presidential decree awarding him the title of "Honored Artist of Russia", and he was also the first Chinese musician to receive this honor. In 2005, President Putin awarded Zuo Zhenguan the Order of Friendship in recognition of his outstanding achievements in the field of culture and art over the years.