The Secret Piano: From Mao's Labor Camps to Bach's Goldberg Variations

by Xiao-Mei, Zhu

  Since the trip to Disneyland had been a failure, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I saw in the Los Angeles Times that the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra would be performing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at the Hollywood Bowl. I bought two five-dollar tickets and invited my cousins’ cleaning lady to come with me. I had never heard the Ninth, and when the evening came, I headed to the concert in an emotional state of mind.

  But there was an enormous traffic jam—and police everywhere. I was about to turn around and head back home when my companion took me firmly by the arm and steered me to our seats. I looked around me, dumbfounded. We were sitting in the stands of what looked like a vast soccer stadium, surrounded by nearly twenty thousand people picnicking and talking while they waited for the concert to begin. It felt like another type of Disneyland. That evening the Ninth only started for me with the first fortissimo: it was impossible to hear the initial pianissimo. It was drowned out by the people around me discussing their vacation plans.

  I thought back to the time my grandmother took me to the Beijing Opera; there, too, the audience had eaten during the performance. But, at least, they seemed to appreciate the show and to give themselves over to what was happening on stage. Here, the most universal musical work had been turned into background music. I was shocked. Were these people aware of how fortunate they were? As someone who had always listened to music with reverence, it was as if something sacred were being shattered before my eyes.

  As time passed I began to lose patience—after all, I hadn’t come to the States to clean houses. Luckily, my employers’ dog came to the rescue. Brown was very old; it wasn’t his fault, but I found that I was incredibly allergic to him. After a few weeks, I was covered in spots. Medicine was ineffective, and neither Chen nor my employers knew of something that would help. There was only one solution: Brown and I had to part ways.

  That was when a telephone call once again changed the course of my life.

  “Xiao-Mei, you can’t go on like this! You have to get back to your piano playing. Come and audition in Boston; I’ll look after you.”

  Like wouldn’t take no for an answer, and he was right. Two months had passed since I had arrived in the States, and I still hadn’t done anything of consequence. Baby-sitting, housekeeping—one day, I had to get back to my true calling. I quickly bought a plane ticket for Boston. It cost three hundred dollars, a month’s wages. But I was going to Boston, a real cultural city. I remembered how impressed I had been with the concert that the Boston Symphony Orchestra had given in China, under the baton of Seiji Ozawa. Like’s wife, Xiaohong, had met Mary Lou, a BSO violinist at a joint concert between the BSO and the Chinese Central Philharmonic Orchestra. Subsequently Mary Lou had helped the couple immigrate to the US. I could already see myself at the New England Conservatory, where I was to audition. I immediately wrote to my mother, Something amazing has happened!

  This time the letter wasn’t just another attempt at concealing the realities of my life.

  My audition at the New England Conservatory couldn’t have gone better. I was accepted for the semester beginning in January and—wonder of wonders—I was given a scholarship. I was overjoyed. So much for Los Angeles and the California Institute of the Arts. I would be better off studying in Boston, I could feel it.

  Greatly relieved, I caught the next plane back to Los Angeles to tell my cousins the good news—at last, I perhaps had a future. I was so happy that I managed to lose my luggage. My cousin was dismayed:

  “How is it possible that you lost everything? What were you thinking? You don’t even have a change of clothes.”

  Amy gave me things from her own closet; she also suggested that I stop by a neighborhood church where they had clothing for those in need.

  A church? I had never been inside one, and I had only a fleeting knowledge of the Christian faith. Prior to leaving Beijing, a friend had talked to me about the Bible, which was banned in China:

  “If you can, buy one and send it to me. I’d really like to read it.”

  The full extent of my acquaintance with the Scriptures boiled down to that brief conversation.

  The priest who welcomed me was full of warmth and humanity. I explained my situation to him. After giving me some clothing, he told me about a meeting that was taking place at the same time and invited me to participate.

  “It’s a Bible study group,” he said.

  I stayed and took a seat. One of the members began to speak:

  “My friends, thanks to Jesus…”

  I listened carefully to him. The longer he spoke, the more memories arose in me. I felt as though I were hearing a member of the Red Guards:

  “Students, thanks to Mao…”

  Needless to say, the Christian faith wasn’t going to come easily for me. And yet, out of curiosity and a sense of gratitude—or perhaps also weakness—I remained for a moment with the church members. I even tried to pray, to see how it felt. That first attempt was not very serious. I used a very down-to-earth method to test the existence of God:

  “God, if you exist, tell me if the New England Conservatory will award me a diploma as a concert performer without my needing to ask anyone for money.”

  I waited for the answer. There wasn’t one. Nevertheless, I was certain my prayer had been heard.

  17

  A Western Master

  If you want to reach the infinite, explore every aspect of the finite.

  (Goethe)

  It is better to deeply understand one field than to be acquainted with ten thousand.

  (Chinese proverb)

  At the end of December, I bade farewell to my cousins and left Los Angeles for good. Like, Xiaohong, and Mary Lou came to pick me up at the airport in Boston. Mary Lou had even agreed to have me stay in her home, where my friends were already living. Her beautiful two-story house was more elegant than anything I had seen in Los Angeles.

  At the Conservatory, I followed Mary Lou’s advice and enrolled in the piano class of a very respected teacher, someone whom she admired—Gabriel Chodos. He had trained under one of the rare students of Artur Schnabel. But before I could begin my first class with him, I had to be tested on my knowledge of music theory.

  The exam took place at eight in the evening. I found myself in a small classroom with other foreign students. The test papers were handed out.

  “We will collect your copies in three hours.”

  Then disaster struck—I couldn’t grasp the meaning of half of the questions. The proctor saw that I was panicked and came over.

  “If you’d like, you can use a dictionary. There’s one at the back of the room.”

  I wasted no time. Nearly an hour had passed, and I hadn’t made much headway. I was blocked by a music history question: Which composer wrote “Four minutes, thirty-three seconds of silence”?

  I anxiously leafed through the dictionary. I clearly didn’t understand one of the words. Four? Minutes? Silence? They were all simple words, but together they didn’t make any sense to me. No composer could have written a work consisting of four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence!

  The three hours were up, and I handed in a blank sheet of paper. I left the Conservatory devastated, convinced that this exam was going to cost me my scholarship, and even keep me from studying with Gabriel Chodos. It was after eleven p.m. I went down into the subway in a state of shock and rushed onto the first train that pulled in. As it left the station, I thought about the exam and the blank sheet I had submitted—about my failure. One station went by, then another. I didn’t remember having seen them on my way. I got out at the third station to look at a subway map. For the life of me, I couldn’t recall the name of the station near Mary Lou’s house! I got back on another train and found myself at the end of the line, still unable to remember the forgotten station. The subway was about to close.

  “What are you doing here?”

  The driver, a tall African-American man, was making the rounds of the cars to verify that everyo
ne had gotten off. There was no one left in the station, it was after midnight, and I was anxious.

  “I’m lost. I’m staying with friends, and I’ve forgotten the name of the station where I’m supposed to get off.”

  “I’m not sure what I can do about that.”

  I gazed at him, distraught. He raised his voice:

  “You should know where you live, right? I sure don’t.”

  He was unnerving me, and he must have sensed it.

  “Look, I’d really like to help you, but how am I supposed to know where you’re staying?”

  He scratched his head:

  “Do you remember the first letter of your stop?”

  “I think it was E.”

  “OK. I’m going to stop the train at every station that begins with E. You get out and see if you recognize the area.”

  There was no point in arguing with him. Off we went, the two of us, heading back in the other direction. It was one in the morning when I finally found the right station.

  I’ll never forget that man, who extended his shift just to help me. My inadequate “thank you” that night could not express all the gratitude I felt, and I could never locate him again. Perhaps, by some miracle, this book will one day find its way into his hands.

  The next day at breakfast, I asked Mary Lou:

  “In English what does ‘four minutes, thirty-three seconds of silence’ mean?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “It was a question on last night’s exam that I couldn’t understand.”

  She burst out laughing:

  “It’s a famous musical work by John Cage!”

  As it turned out, my ignorance did not result in my downfall. A few days later, I was allowed to take my first lesson with Gabriel Chodos. Mary Lou had spoken about him so much; I was very excited to work with him after the months of house cleaning. Gabriel Chodos was a stocky man of about fifty. He gave off a feeling of strength that was, one felt, mixed with a certain anxiety. His hair, pushed back untidily, heightened the intelligence and depth of his melancholy, handsome gaze.

  “What have you prepared?”

  “Schumann’s Fantasie.”

  “Please begin.”

  I threw myself into the work’s first movement—which is a monument to passion—and flawlessly executed the challenging displacements at the end of the second movement that are every pianist’s nightmare. Then I played the third movement as if in a dream. A half hour had passed, and he hadn’t interrupted me. I turned towards him. His eyes were closed, and he had his head in his hands. He remained silent for a moment—which seemed like an eternity—before speaking:

  “You have beautiful fingers, but you’re not conveying any meaning!”

  I blushed. I had withstood the shock of arriving in America by clinging to the idea that I could become a successful artist. And now, in less than a moment, I was disgraced. As far as I was concerned, it was the end of the world, and the earth opened up beneath my feet. I had only one desire: to stop playing the piano. He let me suffer in silence for a few seconds, and then went on:

  “We’re going to work together.”

  He had an air of self-confidence about him. I thought about how tough Isaac Stern had been with the young Chinese violinists, and I started to feel hopeful again. I saw before me the road—the very long road—that I would have to travel to get where I wanted to go. I had only one choice, and that was to trust Gabriel Chodos.

  I certainly didn’t regret it. He is a wonderful musician, an extraordinary teacher, and an artist with very clear ideas. Working with him, I would learn a great deal.

  I discovered his immense talent as a musician the first time I attended one of his concerts: it was a revelation. The program was Beethoven and Schubert, practically the only two composers he performed in public. I was immediately struck by the quality of his sound; it was deep, amber-colored, and delicate. He began with a piece by Schubert that I had never heard before, the Allegretto in C Minor. It is a short work written by Schubert late in life, but its few minutes encompass an entire world of sorrow. Gabriel Chodos’s interpretation was extremely moving. And yet, the piece is remarkably simple: for the most part, both hands play in unison. How had he managed to express such a wealth of emotion from such a score? Conversely, when he played the other, much more difficult pieces in the program, his interpretation seemed so natural and straightforward. Finding the simple in the complex and vice versa: something only a great master can teach you.

  It is only now that I can take the full measure of his talent as a teacher.

  The paces he put me through were merciless. Unlike Professor Pan, who was always natural and spontaneous, Professor Chodos was forbidding. With him, it was a life-or-death struggle. After every class, I wanted to quit the piano; here again, he was the exact opposite of Professor Pan. But the end justified the means.

  I began by working on the Prelude and Fugue in B Minor from the end of the first book of The Well-Tempered Clavier. In this piece, which is one of the high points of the book, all twelve tones of the chromatic scale appear in the subject of the fugue, reminiscent of twentieth-century serialism. This was a piece I had copied in secret in Zhangjiakou, and had gone over for years. I thought I knew it intimately, better than anyone. We worked on it for six months together.

  Gabriel Chodos’s working method had one prerequisite: total respect for the score.

  “The only way to be faithful to the composer,” he would continually say, “is to explore the score in depth.”

  Anyone who turned up for a lesson without the correct edition was summarily turned away. A student who played a rallentendo or a diminuendo that was not indicated was immediately set straight. He wanted me to study the score with a magnifying glass—literally. I bought one and scrutinized the work to be sure that I wasn’t giving an incorrect interpretation to this or that staccato.

  Once this was accomplished, Professor Chodos focused on what he considered to be the twin foundations of musical interpretation: phrasing and complete engagement.

  For him, the attention one paid to the musical phrase was paramount. For each line, he would ask: “Where is the phrase? Beyond the bar lines and slurs, where exactly does the phrase begin and end? Where does it peak? Why is it that way?” He refused to let us count the tempo.

  “It makes the piece ten times heavier,” he would say. “Speak through the musical phrase instead.”

  He made me stop at the end of each phrase and lift my hands from the keyboard.

  “It’s like breathing,” he told me. “You have to let some air into the music.”

  Playing Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in B Minor—both of which are so sustained—was agony for me. I couldn’t manage to lift my hands from the keyboard in the way he directed without breaking the flow of the music. But I knew he was right. No other music is more constructed, more composed than that of Bach; the beginnings and ends of its phrases are distinct, as are its sequences and links. In this, it is like a great poem, although—more than any other piece of music—it leaves its listeners with the impression that it is one uninterrupted flow of music.

  When it came to engagement, Gabriel Chodos agreed with Professor Pan, although they had arrived at the same conclusion via different paths. From the very start of a piece, you had to be completely inside the work—more than you thought possible—and to give your utmost.

  “Generosity,” he would say, “is the greatest quality a musician can possess.”

  When we began working together, he thought that my sound was not dense enough. Too Chinese, perhaps? Over and over, he worked to help me achieve a more orchestral tone. One day he remarked:

  “Draw your energy from your stomach.”

  I looked at him. Nearly twenty years before, Professor Pan had told me the same thing. To tell the truth, I was only partly taken aback: I knew that Gabriel Chodos was married to a Japanese woman. For both the Japanese and Chinese, the stomach is a sacred organ; many Asian people wrap their midsection
in bandages to keep it warm.

  To stimulate my sense of engagement, Professor Chodos sent me to study jazz with another professor at the Conservatory. Nothing could be further from Chinese culture than this type of music. I found myself attempting to improvise in a room that the professor kept in semidarkness, in order to create a jazzlike atmosphere. I was a mediocre jazz player, but I learned a series of lessons from those around me: the ability to be free within limits, the capacity to give one’s all during a concert, and the ability to create a mood. These were lessons that I wouldn’t forget.

  After Bach, Gabriel Chodos had me work on two pieces, and two pieces only: Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze and Beethoven’s Sonata No. 2. He was particularly insistent about working on a Beethoven sonata with me, especially the slow movement.

  “This is the ultimate test,” he warned me. “It’s where you can see if someone is capable of really entering into dialogue with the composer. In a certain way, the slow movements in Haydn, Mozart, and Schubert are simpler: they’re more melodic, more immediate. Beethoven is more modern, more abstract, and his music is made up of small units. It’s when I can tell if a student has something to say.”

  He was right. Even today, I find that a slow movement by Beethoven is the ultimate test. I have heard many superficial or dull interpretations, or worse, ones completely devoid of meaning. A slow Beethoven movement should be part of every qualifying round in international competitions.

  For Professor Chodos, Schumann was different. He found my attack somewhat neutral, like flowing water. This might be an aesthetic reference for a Chinese audience, but not for a Western one.

  “Like a great actress, you have to be able to play everything, not just the pieces you love. We are going to work on Schumann—the best composer for teaching you how to vary moods—the Davidsbündlertänze.”