The ebb and flow

Few orchestral works of the 20th century have walked a path as tumultuous as the Yellow River Concerto, a 20-minute piece for piano and orchestra whose rise and fall has been in tune with China's own fate. It premiered in February 1970 at the height of the Cultural Revolution, it was performed by pianist Lang Lang at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, at the celebrations marking the 10th anniversary of Hong Kong's handover, and during the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. And it will be the centrepiece of this year's National Day concerts to be staged by the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. Yet many people would prefer to forget the origins of what has become the de facto theme song for state occasions. At the time of its premiere, the only works that could be performed were those sanctioned by Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong's wife. Styling herself as the ringleader of revolutionary arts, the first lady seized her political fortune by reforming music, ballet, opera and other art forms with the aim of pulling 'bourgeois weeds' out of the socialist arts fields. One of the works she set her sights on was the Yellow River Cantata, a popular anti-Japanese choral work composed in 1939 by the Paris-trained Xian Xinghai. 'Keep the music and do away with the lyrics,' she instructed Yin Chengzong, a pianist with the Central Philharmonic Orchestra, in 1969. Yin set up a committee to work on the conversion. After brainstorming around the clock with other orchestra members and conductor Li Delun, a four-movement work was composed and a recording sent to Madam Mao. But she was unhappy with the lack of revolutionary fervour. Yin added The East is Red and The Internationale to the rousing finale. 'It's all right now,' Jiang finally said. Given her seal of approval, the work was played for Premier Zhou Enlai and the Politburo in one of the toughest performances the Central Philharmonic had ever given. The orchestra had just been through a reign of terror resulting in four suicides and numerous members being exiled to the countryside. 'We could barely pull together a complete orchestra,' says Liu Qi, the orchestra's principal bassoonist, now retired in Beijing. 'The times had been particularly hard on my section, with one suicide and one player exiled.' The audition went well, however, and the piece was scheduled to be performed at the 1970 Guangzhou Spring Trade Fair. After receiving critical acclaim, the work returned to Beijing for 13 consecutive performances, but the story of the Yellow River Concerto had only just begun. When Mao criticised 'American imperialism and its running dogs' in the wake of the United States invasion of Cambodia in May 1970, the concerto took on an anti-US tone. The People's Daily quoted two PLA soldiers as saying the concerto tied in well with Mao's instructions to prepare for possible nuclear war. 'The strong piano notes in the finale Defend the Yellow River express the revolutionary people's profound hatred, just like thousands of bullets being fired at the enemy.' Such fighting words had subsided by the time US president Richard Nixon arrived in Beijing less than two years later and shook hands with Mao and Zhou. A year later, Nixon invited a close friend, maestro Eugene Ormandy of the Philadelphia Orchestra, to undertake a historic goodwill tour to the Middle Kingdom and present what was to be the first performance of the Yellow River Concerto by a Western orchestra. To ensure the concerto was played correctly, the Americans performed it at the Saratoga summer arts festival before an audience of more than 7,500 people. Although the Vienna Philharmonic became the first big orchestra to perform the piece, in mid-1973, all eyes were on the Philadelphia Orchestra's Beijing debut when Jiang, wearing a skirt and clutching a leather handbag, attended the concert. But any satisfaction she might have gained from watching a capitalist orchestra performing a piece of her music denigrating US imperialism would be short lived. The New York Times music critic Harold Schonberg, who accompanied the orchestra on the China tour, termed the work a 'Yellow Fever Concerto', 'a piece of trash' with 'really impressive mediocrity' and 'a bland and even vulgar eclecticism with every clich? of the socialist realism style', and 'a rehash of Rachmaninoff, Khachaturian, late romanticism, bastardised Chinese music and Warner Bros climaxes'. When the review was translated and circulated as an internal document, Jiang was furious. It did not take long for her to counter-attack by labelling Beethoven 'a German capitalist' and Schubert 'a gloomy bourgeoisie' during a nationwide propaganda spree. But with Jiang's fall from grace in 1976, the 10-year Cultural Revolution came to an end - and so did revolutionary works. The Central Philharmonic conductors had had enough and pledged never to play the piece again. 'I can conduct the Yellow River Concerto standing on my head ... it is rubbish, written by committee,' said Li Delun, who died in 2001. It would take another 10 years before the Yellow River Concerto was heard again, this time played to a packed audience at the Coliseum in Hung Hom in September 1986. But the Central Philharmonic's veteran conductors stood by their words and refused to conduct the piece: instead, it was directed from the keyboard by another committee member, pianist Shi Shucheng. Unhappy with the addition of East is Red and The Internationale, Shi set about restoring the early versions that Jiang had rejected. By the time he completed the revision in 1990, demand for the concerto had burgeoned, largely because of nationalist sentiments among overseas Chinese triggered by the Tiananmen crackdown. The concerto's transformation from a Cultural Revolution work to one infused with patriotism was most prominent during the Central Philharmonic's historic 1993 visits to Malaysia and Taiwan, where the island's United Daily News proclaimed in a headline: 'Yellow River brings about enormous nationalistic sentiment.' In the 21st century, the Yellow River Concerto - like its homeland - has adopted a more international outlook. In July 2007, it made its way to Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Centre, where conductor Yu Long said: 'As a gift from the China Philharmonic to our New York friends, we are going to perform for you China's most famous classical work: the Yellow River Concerto.' The pianist was Lang Lang, who had just recorded the work for Deutsche Grammophon. Four decades after its birth, the Yellow River Concerto has shed its revolutionary beginnings - except, perhaps, for the soaring notes of The East is Red and The Internationale. Soundfest: the Yellow River Concerto, Fri-Sat, 8pm, Cultural Centre Concert Hall, HK$120-HK$320 Urbtix. Inquiries: 2721 2030