Thu, Feb 22, 2018 page4

• FEATURE: Legendary harpist retires from harp making

  • By Ho Tsung-han and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter, with staff writer
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  Kaohsiung’s legendary harpist Lee Wu-nan (李武男) said he first encountered the harp at a concert in Japan in 1974.

  Lee was already a noted classical violinist.

  “As violinists became increasingly common, I wanted to learn an exotic instrument,” Lee said. “Then came the concert in Japan.”

  

  Harpist Lee Wu-nan, owner of Taiwan’s only harp factory, plays one of his harps in Kaohsiung on Feb. 9.

  Photo: He Tsung-han, Taipei Times

  “Harp music has this sense of mystery and opulence that was not heard in Taiwan during those times — I fell in love with it,” he said.

  At the time, the nation had no harpists and the Taipei Hilton hosted the only live performances by inviting musicians from abroad, he said, adding: “I thought it would feel great if I could be the first person [in Taiwan] to do that and to have a harp.”

  Four decades later, Lee is renowned in the classical musical scene for introducing the harp to Taiwan and for starting Yi Yin Harps (藝音豎琴), which at its height exported thousands of harps to Europe annually.

  He is a farmers’ son from Kaohsiung’s Gangshan District (岡山) without any formal musical schooling, Lee said.

  No one in his family had anything to do with music and he started an apprenticeship at a rice merchant after elementary school, he said.

  He saved one dollar every day to buy his first violin, which cost NT$400 (US$13.68 at the current exchange rate), Lee said.

  After studying with David Liao (廖年賦), Hsu Chang-hui (許常惠) and Szutu Hsingcheng (司徒興城), among other musicians, Lee went on to play for the Taipei Youth Symphony and founded the Kaohsiung String Orchestra.

  By the early 1970s, Lee was teaching at a violin school and had as many as 70 students per class, but after being captivated by the harp, he decided that it was time to try something different, he said.

  He traveled to South Korea, Japan and the US to take lessons, and later invited Sophie Clavel from Switzerland to become Taiwan’s first resident harp instructor, paying for her airfare and expenses, Lee said.

  The prices harps commanded in the 1970s were daunting, he said.

  “The first pedal harp that I bought cost as much a town house at the Kaohsiung Railway Station’s rear-of-rail district,” he said.

  In 1976, he started Yi Ying, after realizing that he had to make the harp affordable to the average person before he could popularize harp playing.

  He spent three years researching harp design, while stabilizing production line quality control took six more years, he said, adding that Yi Ying exported about 70 percent of its harps to Europe after its quality became recognized.

  Those years kept the family busy: While he was traveling up and down Taiwan for concert performances, his wife, Yang Lien-hua (楊蓮花), ran the factory, he said, adding that the Lee family moved about a dozen times during that period.

  In 1995, he tried to raise funds for a harp museum to display the 20 harp models in Yi Yin’s catalogue, his reproduction of the ancient Chinese konghou, as well as valuable musical scores and harp artifacts from around the world.

  However, a member of the fund-raising organization stole between NT$30 million and NT$40 million, so with the family house foreclosed and Yi Yin going into the red, he and his wife started focusing on sales to pay their debts and salvage the company, Lee said.

  Although European orders eventually returned to Yi Yin, Taiwan’s diminishing number of music students put a revival out of reach, he said.

  “This situation is true of music instruments across the board. The number of students peaked in the 1960s and 1970s, but now even the piano-playing population is declining,” he said.

  All of the nation’s Yamaha and Kawai piano factories are gone, with Yamaha closing its last piano factory in Taiwan between five and six years ago, he said.

  “Looking back, teaching the violin when I was in my 30s — although there were a lot of students — that was the least stressful time in my life,” Lee said.

  “I never once thought this would be Taiwan’s fate. There is no future in sight for playing any kind of musical instrument,” he said.

  “There are fewer kids who want to learn the violin. You have to practice at home for that. Parents are exhausted trying to distract their kids with computers and cellphones,” he added.

  Now his health is fragile, with dialysis treatments three days a week, and he needs a walking aid, but he still plays the harp when he can, Lee said.

  He has passed down his love of harps to his two sons, Lee Che-yi (李哲藝) and Lee Che-yin (李哲音), who are successful concert harpists.

  “Che-yi has a gift for recitals and during one concert, he let the audience decide what composition would be played. I admired him and was even jealous,” Lee Wu-nan said.

  His second son, Lee Che-yin, was going to abandon music until he realized how many girls were chasing his older brother because he is a harpist, Lee Wu-nan added.

  Lee Che-yin has now performed more than 100 concerts in underprivileged areas, he said, adding: “I am proud that he is doing what I could not and did not.”

  “I have learned to let go,” Lee Wu-nan said, adding that next month, he and his wife are to hand over the business to harpist and harp maker Pan Min-pin (潘珉斌), who has worked for Yi Yin for more than 20 years.

  “Pan has worked for me since he graduated from high school. He can play, teach, tune and make harps, as well as anything in between,” Lee said. “I rest very easy leaving things to him.”
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