With stunning swiftness, China's surging ranks of classical musicians have found a home in Western concert halls, conservatories and opera houses, jolting a musical tradition born in the courts and churches of Europe.
Large solo fees, plush orchestra jobs, an established audience and the presence of teachers steeped in the tradition have lured them to US and European cities. The phenomenon, which has been building for at least a decade, has gathered steam in the last few years, injecting new vitality into the US classical music scene after historic influxes of Italians, Germans and Russians, and more recently Japanese, Taiwanese and Koreans.
"I honestly think that in some real sense the future of classical music depends on developments in China in the next 20 years," said Robert Sirota, the president of the Manhattan School of Music. "They represent a vast new audience as well as a classical-music-performing population that is much larger than anything we've had so far. You're looking at a time when, maybe 20 to 40 years from now, Shanghai and Beijing are really going to be considered centers of world art music."
Cultural generalizations are always perilous. But many Western musicians and educators interviewed cited similar qualities in Chinese virtuosos: passion and refinement, expressiveness and brilliance. Chinese players seem less bound by the culture of conformity sometimes found in Asia, those Westerners said.
"Mainland China has a tremendous sense of going for it," said Paavo Jarvi, music director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. "There is something open. They are reaching out rather than holding back." And they have arrived.
Consider that the hottest artist on the classical music planet may well be the Chinese pianist Lang Lang (郎朗), 24, the darling of fans worldwide. The biggest event in the opera world last year was a Metropolitan Opera premiere by Tan Dun (譚盾), The First Emperor, which the Met hopes to take on tour to China next year.
In 2005, at the most recent Van Cliburn piano competition, a deeply Texan tradition in Fort Worth, eight of the 35 participants were Chinese, up from three in 2001 and one in 1991. One of the six finalists, Huang Chufang (黃初方), went on to win the Cleveland International Piano Competition in 2005. Chinese violinists and pianists now regularly win prizes in the world's other major competitions as well.
Along with Lang and another highly praised Chinese pianist, Li Yundi (李雲迪), also 24, a new crop of stars in their teens or barely out of them are on the way up. They include Wang Yuja (王羽佳), 20, a pianist studying at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, already under major artists' management, and Chen Sa (陳薩), 17, another 2005 Cliburn finalist.
For several decades, Japanese and Korean musicians have formed a major presence in the West. In particular, they have long populated the string sections of professional orchestras. Chinese musicians have joined them in force and are winning high-profile positions. Ni Haiye (倪海葉), who was born in Shanghai in 1972, was appointed principal cellist of the Philadelphia Orchestra last fall. The Chicago and Pittsburgh symphony orchestras have assistant concertmasters born in China.
And not only string players: Wang Liang (王梁), 26, was recently named principal oboist of the New York Philharmonic, one of the most prestigious chairs in orchestral music.
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