A Kiwi Cellist in China

The life & times, ups & downs, of a Kiwi / Australian cellist in Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra.

Sunday, June 11, 2006

Amazon Women

One working week down and I'm starting to get a taste of what life in the Shenzhen Symphony is all about. This week we played two concerts. The first was Brahms 4th symphony paired with the Bruch Violin Concerto, the second was a sort of proms concert full of the inspired music you get at proms concerts: Sleigh Ride (In the true spirit of China all Christmas music has been completely disassociated with any form of religious holiday and can be heard everywhere all year round... please kill me), the bugle thing (you know the one where all the trumpets try to out-do each other), and about four million remarkably similar Strauss waltzes.

The first concert was fairly standard, went quite well, was poorly attended, and poorly applauded (which is apparently the norm here). As for the proms concert there were a couple of things that set it apart for your regular Aussie outdoor gig. For a start it was indoors (understandable as the rain apparently killed a dozen people in landslides yesterday... or did it? In China you never know...). Then there were the 30 odd ushers, each one an amazon woman at least 6 foot tall wearing 12 inch heels (this really does stand out in China where my girlfriend Colleen, at 4 foot 8, is remarkably average height-wise). And finally there was that fact that the whole concert was sponsored by, and for the employees of, one of China's largest cigarette companies. The 1500 strong audience consisted entirely of wives and children of the companie's employees. You could see the wide eyes of the kids stuck firm upon the gargantuan ushers, no doubt believing that if they just keep smoking those smooth smooth cigarettes they too can be 6 foot tall and look forward to a career in basketball or jelly wrestling.

The orchestra itself is not as bad as some people had led me to believe. As far as standards go they lie somewhere in-between a good Australian youth orchestra and a professional orchestra, keeping in mind that both the youth and professional orchestras in Australia are occasionally excellent. It's almost as if you formed an orchestra out of all the players on Australian Orchestra's casual lists, there are some stunners, and some who are decidedly average. One of the main problems holding this orchestra back is the instruments, and this has opened my eyes to the plight of Eastern and Asian musicians. With my well-setup circa-1850 German cello, I have at least 4 times the volume of any of the other cellists in my section. The cellos that many of the others are playing can be compared at best with school instruments. Some of the musicians have slightly better instruments back in their home towns which they wont bring here due to the humidity, but even these are barely adequate.

The thing is good instruments cost a lot of money. Russians are paid little here and Chinese even less, but for many a Chinese and Russian musician this orchestra is the end of the line, as good as it gets. With a salary comparable to that of an underage Australian cafe worker how can they expect to ever buy the necessary thirty to fifty thousand dollar instrument that is needed in a western orchestra?

One of my new friends here is a double bass player from Georgia (the country not the state). He did manage to get himself a good Bass back in Georgia some time ago, but it was destroyed in the early 90's when a tank fired a shell into his home that came within inches of killing himself and his family. Australians, Kiwis, Americans, Westerners... we are all damned lucky.

Posted By charlesbrooks at 10:19 AM 1 comments

1 Comments:

Could you please don't announce my height to the public? ...... ~_~\\\

By Anonymous, at 12:41 PM  

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