Jian Wang might be one of the world’s most renowned cellists, but when he’s hanging out on the edge of the Arctic Circle during the brutal winter, he could be viewed as some kind of eccentric.
Jian Wang will play Dvorak in Bangkok on Dec 7.
But this unusually affable artist laughs it off during a phone interview.
“Oh, I’m the most normal person you’re ever likely to meet,” he said. “My girlfriend lives here in Rovaniemi up in north Finland. So when I’m not on the concert stage or in London or Shanghai, this is a good place to be. In fact, I’m practicing right now for the Bangkok concert.”
Normal isn’t quite the word for the Xian-born prodigy who caught the ear of violinist Isaac Stern when he was filming From Mao To Mozart, the famous film documentary of post-Cultural Revolution China. In the Oscar-winning movie, Jian was the only cellist among a coterie of violinists.
But many a viewer was struck by the 10-year-old prodigy with the “scrunched up serious face” who performed to endless plaudits. Today he is one of the world’s most sought-after international cellists.
Bangkok is fortunate to get him. The Royal Celebration concert “Jian Wang Plays Dvorak” takes place on Sunday, Dec 7, with the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra and Conductor Hubert Soudant.
For the past four decades, ever since that film appearance, Jian has had a non-stop performing schedule. His appearances have included solo performances with all the leading orchestras of the world. The Berlin, New York, Chicago, and Boston philharmonics, the Royal Concertgebouw in Holland, the London and BBC philharmonics in the UK, as well as orchestras in Zurich, Sweden, Italy and Japan.
His conductors are also in today’s pantheon of greats: Abbado, Sawallisch, Jarvi, Chailly, Dutoit, Eschenbach, Gustavo Dudamel and the NY Philharmonic’s Alan Gilbert. The great Vladimir Ashkenazy not only recorded the Elgar Cello Concerto with Jian, but insisted that he come on tour with his orchestra.
And yet Jian shrugs off the honours. Since his public concert performances are relatively few, he attempts to keep these invitations to a manageable level. He also plays and records chamber music with luminaries like Gil Shaham and Myung-Whun Chung.
As those who watch him on his many YouTube performances can attest to, Jian playing the Dvořák and Elgar concertos is a totally different experience than speaking to him. However charming and good-natured he may be, once on the concert stage, his intensity with his instrument — a rare 300-year-old Amati cello — is almost unnerving. No cellist, whether it be Yo-Yo Ma or Mstislav Rostropovich can “smile” their way through their music. But Jian is so concentrated, so wrapped up in his music, that he looks like he might explode.
He describes the Dvořák Cello Concerto, which he will play in Bangkok, as “what the cello is all about”. The language is made for the instrument, the high emotions flow throughout the entire piece. And yet the cello is part of the entire orchestral fabric.
“In the Elgar Cello Concerto, you have more highly concentrated emotions which take an equal amount of concentration from the player,” he said.
But to this cellist, the highest spiritual value of all music goes to the Bach Suites for Solo Cello, which he recently recorded to critical praise.
“To be honest, at first, I did not especially love them because they are too complex,” he said. “But they have finally turned into a home for my soul as I grow and play more and more.”
The dichotomy between Jian the person — an atheist — and Jian the artist shows itself when he describes Bach.
“I feel that through his music Bach is trying to express the nature of God, which is something more splendid than the plain human world,” he said.
“Each time I play Bach, I feel like I have come to the end of my life and begin to look at the entire existence of this life. The sorrow is very private and unspeakable to me personally. But the music touches the soul directly.” Jian also thinks of Bach in relation to his own fortunate career, both as a Xian-born Chinese person and as an artist.
“The Chinese may understand Bach differently than Europeans or Americans because the aesthetics of Bach come close to philosophy,” he once told an interviewer.
“Historically too, modern Europeans and Americans tend to be extremely individualistic. During the era of Bach, people were aware of their own vulnerability and thus did not overemphasise their own role in the world.”
His own life, he feels, is unlike that of Bach. That composer led a tough life, and his compositional talents were rarely recognised until many years after his death. Jian, though, confesses that even during the Cultural Revolution he had been very fortunate. His father had been a noted cellist in Xian, where Jian was born. He started his son on the cello for a very good Chinese reason.
“In China, the son usually follows the profession of the father,” he said. “In fact, my father not only taught me, from the age of four, but he fitted me out with a tiny cello held together with a metal pin.
“Even after a performance today in a great concert hall,” he laughs, “my father will come backstage and say, ‘Well, you should have done it this way…or that way’.”
During the Cultural Revolution, one always obeyed the Party. Jian’s father was called to Shanghai to perform in the opera orchestra, and his son went with him.
“My mother was separated from me. I didn’t see her again for nine years. But this was normal for the time. Nobody thought it was unusual for families to be broken up.”
Soon he was a student at a school for young talented artists affiliated with the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.
And there Isaac Stern heard him, put him in the film, and a few years later, with the help of Stern and a Sau-Wing Lam, a Chinese philanthropist, he went to the Yale School of Music, where he felt right at home, almost from day one.
“Except,” he said, “that first night, when I heard a plane above me and I prayed that somehow that plane would land and take me back to Shanghai.”
The seclusion of Shanghai, with music limited to Russian and Chinese pieces, was replaced by a world of colleagues, openness and a joy in performing. From Yale he went to Juilliard, and during that time, he gave a concert for Unesco in Paris, with an anniversary concert for his mentor, Isaac Stern, in 1990.
That was when the invitations to perform piled in.
First, he was signed by Deutsche Grammophon Records, the first Chinese artist to have that honour, then the orchestras and solo recitals.
It was practical for Jian to find a home in London, but he also keeps a residence in Shanghai, returning frequently not only to play with their orchestra but to give masterclasses as well.
That is, when not relaxing with his girlfriend in Finland, reading, practicing and listening to music (yes, jazz, rock, all kinds of music). At this time he feels renewed and energetic, even during the dark winter days and nights in the Arctic Circle with Bach.
His recording of Bach was praised by the BBC Music Magazine as “wonderful imaginative playing..a ‘must’ for any collection”, but he says that Bach is suitable for playing alone.
Bach may have been Baroque, but Jian is a decided romantic, as he will show in the Dvořák Concerto.
“All the movements have characters, from simple to complex, from naive to profound. It’s exactly like a person’s own life,” he said.
- Tickets cost from 400-2,000 baht and can be purchased from ThaiTicketMajor booths
(visit www.thaiticketmajor.com)
- Contact Bangkok Symphony Orchestra Foundation on 02-255-6617/8 or 02-254-4954 or visit www.bangkoksymphony.org
