Conquering the world - and oneself

Li-Wei Qin. Photo / Gang-Feng Wang.

You have to believe that what you are playing is meaningful for people, and feel capable of integrating it into the real world. Li-Wei Qin, who is playing Schumann and Haydn with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra on its tour, admits it does not seem two years ago that he joined the NZSO in the Elgar Cello Concerto at Beijing's Olympic Arts Festival.

"It was almost like bringing my family to the country where I was born," he tells me. "A lot of the musicians had never been to China or played for an all-Chinese audience."

As for taking that most English of concertos to China, it was the third time he had performed it in Beijing.

"They know I was educated in England and they expect me to play Elgar now," he laughs.

Born in Shanghai, Qin settled in Australia when he was 13 and his new post as head of cello studies at Singapore's Yong Siew Toh Conservatory means he can "give back some of my experience to this region", which includes both Asia and Oceania.

In China he is artistic director of Shanghai's Jin Mao Concert Hall.

"Basically I just do the programming," he admits. "And, from a selfish point of view, I get in a lot of my musician friends to play, which means I hear a lot of music other than cello music. It's a learning curve for me."

The musical scene in China is stimulating but there is still room for development. "The country has the infrastructure or what we might call the hardware in the form of buildings," he explains. "Now it's up to the government to realise the importance of culture and develop the software, as it were.

"It's exciting to be part of this development, rather than enjoying the fruit of it all at the end."

The name of Tan Dun comes up, as Qin has recently performed the Chinese composer's The Map with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

"The concept was so interesting," he says. "Tan Dun went to a village, videoed a series of folksongs and dances and then wrote a cello concerto against those melodies. And so we end up playing along with an old woman who had died since the concerto was written. In other words, this music lets us travel back in time."

Qin pauses, as if to take in the image he has evoked, and then puts it into a more familiar Western context.

"Imagine playing Beethoven Sonatas with Beethoven on the piano!"

Although Qin approves of music being taken into a more conceptual arena, he is not so happy with this being cynically exploited.

"This approach should not be for the purpose of attracting the audience but for being attractive to the audience," he counters.

A subtle difference and a sense of the paradoxical that Confucius would heartily approve of.

Qin takes his art seriously. "We must create spiritually and intellectually challenging works without sacrificing the integrity of the artform," he says.

The cellist interprets "spiritual" in the widest sense of the word. "Every musician has to have belief, whether it's religious or not," he says.

"Even in the simple act of going on stage, you have to believe you can conquer the world. You might have a thousand people listening to what you've been practising in your little room. It's a very psychological thing."

"The world is going so fast and, in many ways, so differently to what we are doing as classical musicians. You have to believe that what you are playing is meaningful for people, and feel capable of integrating it into the real world."

Tonight, playing Haydn's C major Concerto, which he describes as "fresh, with a boyish charm", he could well make it sound for us as if two centuries had not passed since its writing.

PERFORMANCE

What: New Zealand Symphony Orchestra with Li-Wei Qin

Where and when: Auckland Town Hall, tonight at 8pmSENSE OF BELIEF: Li-Wei Qin says musicians must create spiritually and intellectually challenging work.