The Secret Piano: From Mao's Labor Camps to Bach's Goldberg Variations (25 page)

A few months had gone by when Marian Rybicki announced that he had organized a series of concerts in Poland for me. My first tour! Six concerts!

The first event was held in the house where Chopin was born, in
elazowa Wola. At the end of the concert, I was congratulated. The audience had enjoyed how I had played the Mazurkas, which I had worked on with Marian Rybicki. I was reminded that my fellow countryman, Fu Cong, had received the Mazurka Prize for his interpretation of the same pieces at the 1955 Chopin Competition in Warsaw. Then, seeking an answer to a question that intrigued them, they asked: “Is there a particular Chinese aesthetic for the interpretation of these short works?”

I love Poland and its audiences, which are so sensitive to music. I felt a particular sympathy for this people, who, like the Chinese, were not yet free. I understood them, and shared their frustration.

I received a princely sum for the six concerts—the equivalent of two years’ salary for a Polish worker. Unfortunately, the złoty was not convertible at that time, and I wouldn’t be able to take the money out of Poland. I then had the idea of contacting the Chinese ambassador to Poland. I explained to him who I was and the nature of my call. I wanted to entrust him with my concert wages so that he could purchase scores of Chopin’s music for the Beijing Conservatory. The ambassador was at first suspicious, then aggressive, and then subjected me to a veritable interrogation before hanging up on me. Another tie with my country was broken. When I think that Teng Wenji advised me not to leave China! Instead, I donated the money to Solidarity, which at that time was a symbol of hope for so many Polish people.

Back in Paris, I was faced with a new and quite difficult challenge: my student visa was about to expire, and I had to go and plead my case at the immigration office at the Prefecture of Police. On my first visit, I waited eight hours, and I finally reached the window just as the office was closing. The next day, I got up at five a.m. in order to be first in line. I didn’t fare any better; after four hours, I was rudely turned away without being able to offer a word in my defense. I went back again—and again. I got a glimpse of a very different side of France: bureaucratic, indifferent, hostile. The only clear information I was able to obtain was that it would be easier for me to apply for French nationality with an American passport than a Chinese one. I would have to return to the States and wait a year and a half for my official papers to come through.

Everything had been going so well. In Paris I was happy, I had made wonderful friends, and I was starting to have a concert career. And now, due to the visa predicament, I had to turn around and go back. I felt bitter and discouraged. Would I ever find a permanent home?

I didn’t have much choice. I made some calls to friends in America, hoping to find a place to land. Janet, a musicologist living in Boston, agreed to take me in.

I filled my bags with my few items of clothing and all my scores and flew to Boston. Janet owned two beautiful Blüthner pianos. I consoled myself with the fact that, at least, I’d be able to practice.

Unfortunately, it can sometimes happen that professional musicians have difficulty listening to the repertoire of others. Except for one musical work…

There was simply nothing to be done about it. Following my arrival in Boston, I had to face facts: I couldn’t impose my playing on Janet. I understood her reasons all too well—between working on her thesis in musicology and giving piano lessons, she was up to her ears in music. There was only one solution: I’d have to practice when she wasn’t at home.

One day, when I was glancing through her extensive music library looking for a piece to sight-read, I fell upon a thick score by Bach, the
Goldberg Variations
. The work was composed late in Bach’s life, and the story of how it came to be written is a curious one. Count Hermann Carl von Keyserlingk, the Russian ambassador to Dresden, suffered from insomnia. He commissioned Bach to write a work that his young harpsichordist, Goldberg, could play for him at night while he was waiting to fall asleep. It is one of the rare works that Bach—who never imagined a posthumous legacy—had printed.

I had never before attempted the
Goldberg Variations
, and I thought to myself that there was enough material to keep me occupied for a while.

I placed the score on the music rest.

The opening aria—what a gentle beginning! Here was music that took its time, that welcomed the listener. I went on to the first variation, and then the second. An hour and a half later, I was back to the initial aria, which concludes the work’s thirty variations.

While I was practicing, I was unaware that Janet had returned home. This time, however, she didn’t interrupt me. It wasn’t until I had finished the last note that she came up to me.

“You can play the
Goldberg Variations
as often as you like,” she said. “You have no idea how much good that did me. I could listen to them forever.”

I was only too willing to oblige. For several weeks, I worked on the
Goldberg Variations
, sometimes up to eight hours a day, and Janet never complained. I became Goldberg to her Countess Keyserlingk. As soon as the opening notes of the aria sounded, she felt well again. As a sign of encouragement, she even presented me with a copy of Frederick Neumann’s
Ornamentation in Baroque and Post-Baroque Music
. I, however, curiously enough, was not yet entirely won over by the piece: to be truthful, its overriding virtue was that it allowed me to play.

When Janet was just about to defend her thesis, I decided—in spite of the restorative virtues of the
Goldberg Variations
—to find another place to live, so that she could work in peace. The first friend I asked to take me in replied, in all seriousness:

“It’s out of the question. My husband isn’t working. He is at home all day, and I can’t leave the two of you alone together.”

I couldn’t get over it. First, that she could have had such a thought, and second, that she would dare to express it to me.
Remember
, I told myself,
you’re not in China anymore
—a response like hers would have been considered a serious offense there.

Things went better with the second call: Mary and Ryan agreed to put me up. Mary taught ceramics at an art school, and Ryan was an insurance salesman. They lived outside of Brattleboro, where I had met them, in Saxon River, a village that had only a supermarket, a bakery, a post office, and a church.

At the same time, I applied for a job at the music school where I had previously taught. The answer was unequivocal:

“I’m sorry, but you left. That’s it. This is not a hotel.”

Next, I tried my luck at Smith College, one of the area’s most prestigious institutions. I will never forget the compliments the Dean paid me following my interpretation of a mazurka by Chopin. I had played it for her to demonstrate my abilities. She promised to do her best to create a position for me, but there was nothing she could offer me at the present time.

I sent out fifty resumes; no responses. My friends suggested that I look for a position in Washington. I put all I had into a plane ticket, but to no avail.

Desperate, I tried my luck at the bakery in Saxon River. The owner, doubtful, asked me if I was ready to get up at four a.m. every day. I explained to him that I had done that for years, in a labor camp. He stared at me, and then looked at my hands.

“They’re too small; you’ll never be able to knead the dough.”

I thought of Professor Pan, who had once said: “Try to draw energy from the keyboard, not just transmit energy to it. Imagine you are kneading dough. You’ll see, this will entirely change your relationship to the instrument.” There was no point in arguing with the baker; he didn’t think I was right for the job.

Things were not looking good. I had neither work nor any prospects. Thankfully, Mary and Ryan were there to support me. When, at the end of the first month I stayed with them, I tried to give them a hundred dollars to help out, Ryan refused. He was interested in everything, and not a day went by without him asking me about China or the Cultural Revolution. He went all out to keep me busy; on weekends he took me skating and on motorbike outings. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the motorbike excursions, but I reassured him that they were great fun.

Meanwhile, Mary understood what I needed most—to have quiet time for myself. She was also an artist, and she understood the value of silence. If I was practicing when she returned home from work, she would slip silently into the living room to listen, gesturing for me to keep playing. When her friends came to visit, she told them not to disturb me. When she organized a party, she apologized. She showed me great respect, and I returned it in kind.

There was only one thing that Mary and Ryan couldn’t understand: why I practiced so much. Mary would say to me gently:

“You don’t have a job or any upcoming concerts. Where do you find the energy to keep up such discipline? Where does that come from in you?”

I didn’t know how to respond.

But what I did know was that I had just had the musical encounter of my life. The
Goldberg Variations
completely took over my existence. This music contained everything: it had all one needed to live. The first variation gave me courage. I smiled when I rehearsed the tenth, which is playful; I sang to the thirteenth, whose musical line soothes me like no other work. The polonaise rhythm of the twenty-fourth had me dancing, and I meditated during the fifteenth and twenty-fifth, two of the three variations in minor keys: they moved me to tears.

Then there is the thirtieth, the famous Quodlibet that I understand as a sort of hymn to the glory of the world. The more I practiced it, the more it amazed me. By blending two popular songs from the period in the bass line that provides the backbone of the variations, Bach is at the height of his powers; the profane gives birth to the sacred, the most learned counterpoint gives way to the greatest simplicity. One day, I discovered the name of one of the two melodies that he used for this particular variation: “Cabbages and turnips drove me away—had my mother cooked meat I’d have chosen to stay.” What were cabbages doing in this sublime variation? At the same time, how was it not possible to recall the cabbages that we had been forced to harvest in the fields of Zhangjiakou, the same cabbages that turned up each day in my mess tin? It was a sign of fate. Even today, when I reach this final variation, I see the gloomy, arid hills of Zhangjiakou.

Finally, the initial aria returns, for me the most moving passage of all. Throughout the thirty variations, the tension mounts. Bach has drawn upon every possible human emotion. Then, suddenly, all that remains is a serene, comforting music, the exact opposite of the great crescendos that end so many classical works. Gently, the aria sinks into oblivion: a void that is not an expression of want, or death, but rather of well-being and light. As the music subsides, the spirit ascends.

I took my new working methods and tried to apply them to the
Goldberg Variations
, pushing them to the extreme. It was a difficult challenge, and only rarely was I successful.

First, I emptied my mind before playing. Then came the search for a tempo that simultaneously allowed the piece to breathe, brought out all of the splendors of the score, and also allowed thought to develop as naturally as possible. Incidentally, the search for a proper tempo is not confined to the world of music—one must seek it in life as well. Then I tried to uncover the thrust and the truth of the score. Finally, I disappeared behind the music, as though my study of Laozi and Zhuangzi had finally showed me that the best pianists—like the best rulers—are those of whom one is barely aware, and that this was a worthy goal.

It was not as though I had found the key or discovered an explanation or a response to a question. I didn’t consciously alter my manner of playing. Instead, each day, through practice, this new approach became more natural.

The more I worked on the
Goldberg Variations
, the more it seemed to me that Bach provides a perfect illustration of this horizontal thrust in music, of the line and movement that had become increasingly precious to me. Whether in the
Variations
or elsewhere, there are very few rests in Bach. The music is more about flow, with lines continually overlapping in the composer’s learned counterpoint, even in the most prominent articulations in the discourse. As I see it, this is what makes Bach’s music so soothing for its listeners. With few exceptions—such as in the two
Passions
—it is never dramatic or halting, but rather serene and sustained.

And yet, the
Goldberg Variations
provides an unsurpassed example of how this horizontal motion needs to be underpinned by the throbbing pulse of the bass—isn’t the theme of the variations made up of the bass notes of the thirty-two measures of the initial theme? In the
Goldberg Variations
, it is the bass that is the giver of life.

I was astounded to find the most basic elements of Chinese culture in the
Variations
, as though Bach had had a premonition or was the reincarnation of a great Chinese sage. In my opinion, Bach surpassed his calling as a Lutheran who placed his art in the service of God. He is universal.

The intertwining musical lines of Bach’s counterpoint reminds me of calligraphy, a typical Chinese art form that is primarily the art of breathing and meditation. When I practice, I think of the great masters of Chinese calligraphy who withdrew into the silence of the mountains. They watched and contemplated, refraining from any action, until one day they found they were ready. Under the Ming Dynasty, the eighteen-year-old prince Zhu Da was forced to flee the Manchu invasions and become a monk in a mountain monastery. He lived there, poor and unknown, spending most of his life in contemplation. Finally, he painted a few rare masterpieces and achieved fame at an advanced age. Zheng Banqiao, a prodigious painter of bamboo trees, spent forty years of his solitary life contemplating and painting his subject. He wrote: