Music from the heart
Peng Peng could be the next Lang Lang, but he has chosen a quieter path of composing music. Raymond Zhou reports
In an age when music prodigies seem to be a dime a dozen, it is rare to see someone well on the road to superstardom turning his back on his destiny.
Peng Peng has performed with such illustrious maestros as Leonard Slatkin and Itzhak Perlman and was described by Orlando Sentinel as having "a technical assurance that suggests his career will be one worth watching" when he was 12, and by the Cincinnati Enquirer as a successor to Lang Lang and Yundi Li, when he was 13.
But you won't see him wowing parents with a crowd-pleasing rendition of Fur Elise any time soon. Peng Peng, 18, would rather hunch over the manuscript of Gustav Mahler, or his own scores, than win the plaudits of star-chasing classical music dilettantes.
Neither will you catch him offering tips to eager parents seeking a shortcut for their children to be the next Lang Lang.
Early this year, while Peng Peng was working on his composition in a Juilliard studio, he was approached by a middle-aged Chinese man. "Are you a student here? My daughter is preparing to get into Juilliard next year," said the man.
As Peng Peng nodded, the man fired off a salvo of questions, ending with: "I bet Juilliard is not as good as they say. You have been here for seven years now. But you're not a celebrity yet. Look at Lang Lang. He is now the greatest because he went to Curtis (Institute of Music in Philadelphia)."
Peng Peng was so annoyed he pressed a ring tone on his cell phone and ran into the toilet. In his hurry, he mistakenly hid himself in the women's room. When he came back, he found the man had left him a note on his score, with questions on filling out a visa application.
"What are these parents doing?" Peng Peng thought. "They are pushing their kids in a direction opposite to art."
While China has tens of millions of children learning the piano, most are in it for fame and fortune, says Peng Peng. These kids are put through grueling practice, which the pianist calls "horrible and inhumane".
"Many parents see classical music as just another channel for success, just like rap and pop. They are blinded by the halo of big stars," he says.
Not that he has anything against Lang Lang or Yundi Li. He calls them "titans among young Chinese classical musicians with disparate styles". Lang Lang is "grand and passionate" while Li is "restrained and poetic".
Peng Peng says classical music is the highest form of art and culture. It lets people experience what's beautiful in life, and create a new spiritual world.
"It is not about showing off one's technique, tempo, or gestures. That may delight the player or amateurs in the audience, but ignores the inner value of a musical work," he expounds.
The tendency for technical swagger is not limited to China, the Nanjing native adds. People everywhere tend to exaggerate to draw attention.
Peng Peng is his stage name. His real name is Gong Tianpeng. He has the typical resume of a piano prodigy: He started learning the piano at 5; and got into the Shanghai Music Conservatory at 9; he was enrolled into the Juilliard pre-college division at 10; at 14, he was signed by ICM, one of the top talent agencies in the world. He has performed with a dozen US-based symphony orchestras, and received positive notices. It is not an overstatement to say that he could become the next piano superstar from China.
However, one may say that prospect does not excite him. While he keeps performing - "for survival" he says - he has shifted gears to composing. He calls performing "a form of recreation" because the performer has to absorb the classical work and endow it with his own emotion and understanding.
Still, that is not enough for him. While he adjusts his performance schedule to the season, he spends four hours a day writing his own music. Studying with Samuel Adler of Juilliard, he has written many works for piano, chamber ensembles and orchestras. Among the accolades he has won are an ASCAP Foundation Young Composer Award for 2006, the Charlotte V. Bergen Scholarship for Immortal Struggle, and the 2004-05 Juilliard Pre-College Division Composition Competition for his Exit, Stage Left! scherzo for orchestra.
He wrote a symphonic overture for the Beijing Olympics and his very first symphony was dedicated to the victims of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. These works were not commissioned by the Chinese government, he explains.
"They came from my heart."
Judging from the titles of his second and third symphonies, Epic Fantasy: Of War and Silver Lights and The Song of Eternality, it is safe to conclude that this teenager is not into adolescent pursuits. As a matter of fact, many people were taken aback by Peng Peng's maturity when he gave a lecture at Beijing's National Center for the Performing Arts, on Mahler. He knows Mahler inside out, and he plays variations on Mahler's symphonies as if he wrote the originals. He even composed his own versions of Chinese poems to accompany them. (One of Mahler's works was adapted from Tang Dynasty poems.)
Yet, Peng Peng does not feel one has to be an adult to understand Mahler. "I can see the future of mankind from Mahler's music. I can hear the call of the gods from the dark abyss. Every note embodies a brand new world. Everything is so lifelike and somber from cradle to grave. I believe there is no age limit to get into his works."
This kind of precociousness may startle some because music prodigies may experience a burnout.
"Passions can overwhelm. When one's genius reaches a point unattainable by physical and mental strength, it can cause a breakdown. As an artist fuses his passion and talent, it forms a river of blood in his own mind, in which he may drown himself."
Peng Peng says some biographic films may portray this as "a feature of greatness" while others may deem it "an illness". For him, an artist should master the control of his own feelings, "maybe letting go just once, but never all the time, which will hurt you".
The day after he was pestered by the Chinese father at Juilliard, Peng Peng met a teenage girl from China, who is still with one of the nation's music conservatories, accompanied by her mother. Having looked at his scores, the mother asked: "What's the use of writing music? Can you surpass Beethoven? Can you become rich?"
For Peng Peng, she was missing the whole point. "It doesn't matter whom you can surpass. You're a winner only when you achieve peace of mind. There is nothing harder to achieve than that."
