Worn, stained piano scores, vintage plastic cassettes sticky with fingerprints, a black-and-white photo featuring Chairman Mao Zedong talking to a young man, and a yellowed linen cushion cover embroidered with the Chinese characters “Yellow River Piano Concerto 1969.” In the living room of Yin Chengzong’s apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in New York, his mementoes of The Yellow River Piano Concerto usher you right back to 1960s China.
“It seems to me that everything just happened yesterday,” Yin, one of the most renowned pianists in China, told NewsChina, recalling the birth of The Yellow River Piano Concerto, a masterpiece that made him a household name in China, and the highs and lows of his life in the last five decades.
Born in 1941 on the “piano island” of Gulangyu in Fujian Province in southeast China, Yin was trained as a classical pianist in China and the Soviet Union, and later developed his career in the US. As a “so-called post-40s generation,” as he puts it, “I have gone through all the things, the Anti-Japanese War, the War of Liberation and all the [political] movements.”
“These experiences have given depth to my composing and performing.”
In the 1960s, the piano and Western classical music were regarded as bourgeois and forbidden in China. But Yin played an important role in helping to save it from oblivion during the days of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76).
In May 1967, Yin and his friends, all young and ambitious, physically carried a piano on to Tiananmen Square and performed for the crowd. For three days, Yin played revolutionary songs, Chinese folk music and Peking Opera and “the cheering audience grew from a few hundred to nearly 3,000,” he recalled.
The three-day-event was a sensation and, more importantly, sent a strong message to Yin. “Chinese people needed to hear the piano and they wanted to listen to something that they were familiar with.” Feeling inspired, Yin studied and researched Chinese folk music and Peking Opera and created piano pieces based on them.
In 1968, Yin wrote a piano accompaniment for The Legend of the Red Lantern, a modern Peking Opera, to critical acclaim. The success encouraged him to further explore the possibility of using the piano, the king of Western instruments, to interpret Chinese traditional music. All he needed was an exceptional work.
“That’s when I came across The Yellow River Cantata,” Yin said. Originally written by Chinese composer Xian Xinghai in 1939 in Yan’an, the Communist Party of China’s wartime revolutionary base in Shaanxi Province, “The Yellow River Cantata is one of the greatest music pieces of China’s modern times,” Yin said. “It manifests the fighting spirit of Chinese people and the very determination of China to rise as a newborn nation.”
In 1969, Yin and other members of a special committee arranged The Yellow River Piano Concerto based on The Yellow River Cantata. In the final movement, Yin incorporated the melody from the revolutionary song “The East Is Red,” a paean to former leader Mao. The highly acclaimed piece catapulted Yin to stardom in China.
After the Cultural Revolution, Yin’s life took a sharp turn: He was subjected to four years of political scrutiny and his career was derailed.
In 1983, at 42, Yin made a big decision: to move to the US with his wife and daughter. In the new country, with only a few bucks in his pocket, China’s beloved pianist was faced with the humbling experience of starting from the bottom again.
“Back then, China was poor and people who came here from China were poor. Most worked in restaurants,” Yin said. “No one would ever have thought that musicians from China were coming to the West to make a career.”
Financial difficulty was one thing, but the lack of recognition from American audiences was another altogether. For a long time, Yin did not have the opportunity to perform Chinese works. “It was very difficult for a Chinese musician to pursue art here,” he said.
Many of his musician friends from China changed careers. Some told him he should consider changing also, or even consider opening a small business. But Yin knew it was not his lot in life just to make money. He had a clear goal in mind: to perform in the best concert halls in the world and introduce great Chinese piano pieces to Western audiences.
Yin was persistent in his efforts to hone his skills and expand his repertoire. Before long, he garnered fame and critical acclaim, and started to work with leading orchestras, such as the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra, performing around the world. While he gradually gained recognition in the West, he missed his audiences back home and longed to perform in China again. He sensed his goal would only be achieved if Chinese audiences liked his music. “My roots are in China and most of my fans are there,” Yin said. After living in the US for 10 years, Yin finally got his chance to perform in China again. In 1993, Yin was invited to play The Yellow River Piano Concerto in Beijing for the 35th anniversary celebration of China Central Television, the State broadcaster.
Yin was excited about the opportunity to perform again in China and to see Beijing, the city where he lived for 20 years. To better prepare for his visit, he borrowed copies of the Chinese TV series Expectation, which included scenes of Beijing streets. “When I returned to Beijing, the changes in the city were indeed tremendous,” Yin said. “Many of the old places were gone.” As he played The Yellow River Piano Concerto at the event, he was greeted with warm rounds of applause from the audience. As he looked at the spectacular chorus of thousands singing together, Yin couldn’t help but shed tears of excitement.
Since then, Yin returns to China two or three times a year. He has become a fixture at the nation’s special occasions, performing The Yellow River Piano Concerto at important ceremonies in China, including the 50th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1999, the 10th anniversary of the return of Hong Kong in 2007 and the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China in 2011. This year marks the 70th anniversary of the PRC as well as the 50th anniversary of The Yellow River Piano Concerto, which Yin performed at festivities in China through May.
The Yellow River Piano Concerto has been performed over a thousand times in over 50 countries on five continents. In the classical music world, the concerto is held as a representative work from modern China.
The piece is “an expression of patriotism and a tool of nation-building,” says Cathy Barbash, a specialist in cultural diplomacy who helped organize the Philadelphia Orchestra’s tour in China in 1993. “Programming the concerto provides non-Chinese cultural organizations wishing to engage with China a way to signal their interest and respect to their Chinese collaborators.” In 1973, Yin performed The Yellow River Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra and conductor Eugene Ormandy during the orchestra’s first tour of China.
“The Yellow River Piano Concerto is very well written. It has stories and it shows the national personality,” said Steven Fang Fei, the artistic director and conductor at the Asian Cultural Symphony of the USA. “Even performers and audiences from different backgrounds can appreciate the beauty of this work.” Fang has been a fan of Yin Chengzong since he first heard The Yellow River Piano Concerto in the 1970s. Over the past couple of years, he has worked with Yin and presented concerts to audiences in the US.
For younger generations, the 50-year-old piece still strikes a chord in their hearts. “The spirit of The Yellow River Piano Concerto inspires us not to be afraid of hardship, never give up and strive to do our work well,” said Hu Shenghua, a principal second violin in the Met Orchestra at New York City’s Metropolitan Opera.
Yin said The Yellow River Piano Concerto has always been an inspiration. “At the beginning, I composed the concerto out of pure passion. I wanted to find a future for piano in China and I wanted to create something very Chinese.”
“Now I think it is an ode to the Chinese national spirit. It manifests the fighting spirit of Chinese people and the determination of China to rise as a nation. It is about the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation over the past century.”
With all the anniversaries coming up, 2019 is going to be a busy year for Yin. He is scheduled to play eight concerts in China from May through August to celebrate the events.
Now 78, he still practices piano five to six hours a day and still enjoys playing The Yellow River Piano Concerto, a piece that he has performed for half a century. “Music is the best gift I can give to my motherland,” he said.
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