Wang Jian is Bach to church with his cello tonight
A well-known landmark in Beijing, the Wangfujing Church, will play host to a special concert of Bach tonight in front of 300 lucky music lovers.
A popular tourist site and a regular backdrop for many photographers, the church was originally built in 1655 by two Catholic missionaries from the West. The concert of Bach will have a strong religious theme and offers a rare chance to see famous cellist Wang Jian's interpretation.
A frequent musician of the Beijing Music Festival (BMF), this year, Wang appears in two concerts for this 10th anniversary.
Yesterday evening at the Beijing Concert Hall, Wang joined the Shanghai Quartet to play Schubert's String Quintet in C Major. The sold-out concert hall witnessed an impressive and warm interpretation of the great work written for a string quartet, with an extra cello performed by Wang.
Tonight, the cellist will present Bach's Suite at the Wangfujing Church.
"It is one of the most anticipated concerts at this year's BMF," says Yu Long, chairman of the BMF Arts Foundation. "Wang's emotional interpretation of Bach's Suites for Solo Cello at a church, which ensures the best audio impact, will bring a breath of fresh artistic air."
"Bach's music is the dialogue between the God and human beings and the church is the best venue to appreciate it. Here the Wangfujing Church is no longer a religious place but a cultural landmark where the East meets West," said Yu.
Wang's talent has been highly acknowledged by virtuoso violinist Isaac Stern (1920-2001).
Among the first Western musicians granted access to the country as it emerged from the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), the virtuoso violinist's 1979 visit to China was documented in the 1981 Academy award-winning film From Mao to Mozart.
The last 15 minutes of the film show an 11-year-old pupil at the Shanghai Conservatory earnestly playing his cello before the distinguished foreign visitor. Twenty years later, Stern described the cellist (Wang Jian) as "one of the finest young instrumentalists of our time."
The six suites contain six movements each: a formal prelude followed by the dance-based Allemande (German), Courante (French), Sarabande (Spanish), Menuets or Bourrees, and ending with a Gigue (English). Each suite maintains a distinctive character throughout its six movements and the set as a whole displays a stately progression from simple to complex and from naive to profound.
While the Bach suites are not technically difficult by modern standards of cello playing, the performance of all six in one concert constitutes a major undertaking, not only of stamina, but deeply informed musical intelligence.
"I did not specially love Bach's suites when I was a teenager. They are beautiful but too complex. But it finally turns into home for my soul as I grow and play more and more times. It is the music that I play for myself. When I feel tired of playing concertos, bored by music, I play Bach alone, and soon I would feel everything is pure and clean and my inspiration returns inside me," says the cellist who started to learn cello with his cellist father at age 4.
"I don't believe in any religion but music spurs my spiritual pursuit. I try to comprehend Bach's suites and interpret it as enchanting as I can so as to touch the listeners," he says.
(China Daily 10/11/2007 page18)
