BMF: From Mao to Mozart - Oct 30

Nancy Pellegrini hears from Stern’s son about a journey that changed the face of Chinese classical music forever

The Beijing Music Festival (BMF) is always an event worth waiting for, but this year they’re making, and celebrating, history. 2009 marks the 30th anniversary of From Mao to Mozart, the Academy Award-winning documentary that traced violin legend Isaac Stern’s musical journey to China.

In addition to visiting Peking Opera rehearsals and sports training schools, Stern gave concerts and master classes, spoke with professors and students, and worked closely with Li Delun, China’s father of classicalmusic.

From Mao to Mozart shed light on China’s music education programme, and foreshadowed the competition international musicians would soon face. This year, BMF closes with a memorial concert – conductor (and Isaac’s son) David Stern leads Wang Jian, Vera Tsu, Tang Yun, Li Weigang and other musicians featured in the historic film.

‘What struck me most at the time was how everyone reacted to my father,’ says David. ‘There was this incredible sensitivity, tension and a need to be inspired.’

This was Stern’s natural habitat. Brilliant musician that he was, he realised early on that he would never be the next [violin demigod] Jascha Heifetz himself, so he devoted his life to nurturing those who could.

No one ‘made it’ in American classical music without a nod from the master – just ask Lang Lang. Mao co-star Li Delun was Stern’s Chinese ‘opposite number’. Under Western circumstances, he wouldhave been a happy cellist in a local orchestra; in China, he had to create his own.

After studying conducting in the USSR, Li did a two-year musical ‘Long March’, holding concerts for farmers and factory workers (who often thought the strange cases contained weapons) and explaining classical music.

In 1977, Li conducted Chinese musicians in their watershed moment, a concert of Beethoven’s ‘Symphony No. 5’; to artists, this symbolised the true end of the Cultural Revolution.

He also discovered and supported some of today’s leading Chinese musicians, such as conductors Li Xincao, ZhangGuoyong and violinist Xue Wei, as well as building the city’s first concert venue, the Beijing Concert Hall. ‘It was a great meeting of musical minds,’ said David about his father and Li.

‘They were both humanists and had a huge respect for music.’ Li’s family still speaks reverently about Stern. ‘[Li] was very happy about the film. He said it accurately portrayed music in China,’ his widow Li Jue recalls.

‘Maybe it only opened the music education system a sliver, but it was a beginning. And it allowed the world to see China’s music.’ As for David, he felt that Mao was a harbinger of things to come.

‘Thisestablished China as the musical country to watch.’ In 2000, he returned to Beijing to conduct an opera and visited the ailing Li in hospital, while his own father was recovering from heart surgery.

Isaac Stern died in September of the same year; just a month later, Li Delun passed away. The music world will not see their like again – but From Mao to Mozart ensures they will never be forgotten.

From Mao to Mozart BMF closing Gala Poly Theatre , 7.30pm.80-180RMB.