Look To The Future

In 2005, Simon Rattle went on a tour of East Asia with the Berlin Philharmonic and predicted that the future of classical music was in China. It remained unclear exactly what kind of future he had in mind. Was he most impressed by the huge market for CDs and merchandise, an unprecedented number of potential young listeners, the compositional talent, the opportunity to build up a lively musical culture? In any case, his prophecy caused a shudder of disbelief in Europe and North America. Exaggeration, paranoia and exoticism have mixed to create a strange, distorted view of classical music in China: 50 million Lang Langs are coming for our conservatory spots! “We all know the Chinese can imitate better than anybody else, they will be able to make a car as good as BMW and Volkswagen but cheaper,” Daniel Barenboim has said. “It’s better to send the Berlin Philharmonic to play Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 because [that is something] they can’t imitate. Neither the Beethoven nor the orchestra.”In the meantime, Western orchestras routinely tour in China, and increasing numbers of Chinese orchestras and artists are coming to the West. Jiatong Wu has helped facilitate these exchanges since 1991, when he and his father founded the first private Chinese performing arts presenting agency. He has brought many European orchestras, opera, ballet and theater companies to China, and vice versa. Recently, I met Wu at a chic rooftop bar in Berlin, overlooking the zoo. He had just arrived, from Athens, where the Shanghai Kunqu Opera Troupe had given a guest performance. “It was amazing—Kunqu is totally unfamiliar to the Greeks, and there was no pre-concert talk, no speaker, nothing except the subtitles,” he told me. “But the people understood it anyway. Even though, on stage, there was just one table, two chairs and two performers.” Wu studied in Munich and Vienna and speaks fluent German with the inflection of those southern capitals. He had a meeting with the Berlin Festival in the afternoon and was flying to Beijing the same evening. Below the bar, Jiao Qing and Meng Meng, Berlin’s latest panda diplomacy acquisitions, projected Chinese soft power. Wu ordered a glass of white wine.