THE PIANIST [ZT]
The other day I remembered one of my old photo albums, with hard pages separated by flimsy paper. I went through it mentally since the real thing had disappeared a long time ago. As a student, I had to make up political albums for school using newspaper pictures, but at home I concocted a "personal" one with the title "The Enescu Musical Festival and Competition, September 1958". It contained portraits of famous musicians, such as David Oistrach and Yehudy Menuhin as well as pictures taken along the competition together with that of the winner of the piano competition, young Li Min Chan. I would listen to the festival concerts on my parents' radio in their bedroom with my ear glued to the speaker, not to disturb my mom. I lovingly kept in mind the name and the music of Li Min Chan, with his unique keyboard touch and memorable interpretation of Enescu's music, despite the astronomical cultural and geographic distance between him and Romania.
The Cultural Revolution of the sixties had tragic consequences in China: the intellectuals were sent to remote farms to learn what physical labor was about. Art was banned, and artists were cruelly tortured. We heard that Li Min Chan was no longer allowed to perform and the whole of Romania rang with the frightful rumor that his fingers had been amputated. In the face of this grave injustice, I kept my emotions in check, knowing that as time went by, physical and spiritual wounds would heal.
In Canada, in the nineties, while working in a laboratory, I heard on the radio that Li Ming Qiang was one of the jurors of the Montreal Piano Competition. The similarity with the name I had cherished for three decades hit me. I desired to contact him, hoping to solve the mystery linked to this pianist. I found the name of the hotel where the jurors stayed and telephoned to make certain Li Ming Qiang was there in the event that I decided to send him a letter. The phone operator politely replied: "Yes, he is here, I'll put you through," and she quickly did so. A male voice answered and, as surprised as I was, I composed myself and asked in English: "Sir, are you the same person as Li Min Chan, the pianist who won the first prize at the Enescu's competition back in 1958, in Bucharest?" "The very same," my interlocutor said in English. "How correctly you pronounce my name!" (Of course, the Romanian phonetic orthography helped!) I had to make an effort to calm down the excitement of having found him alive. I told him that since I had listened to his playing at the Enescu festival, I had nurtured a great admiration for him. He was pleased to hear that, as any artist would have been on learning his art endured in time and space. I asked him why he was in Montreal and he said that he had accepted the invitation of sitting on the jury of the piano competition. Did he come directly from China? I wondered. No, he had came from California, where he had been when the events at Tien An Man Square had broken out, preventing him from returning home. He had therefore decided to stay in California and teach there. I could not help myself and I asked if he had actually been tortured during the Cultural Revolution. He made no reply, but proposed to meet him at the hotel, promising that he'd tell me more then.
The following day, I entered the hotel lobby trying to detect him among the many Asian people loafing around. Unsuccessful in my attempt, I went to the information desk to ask if Mr. Li Ming Qiang had come down, but all of a sudden I found him already standing right beside me. I first looked at his hands: the fingers were there as frail and gentle as the sounds that I had listened to years before. I was relieved that the gossip about his fingers being amputated had proven to be untrue. However, as I would learn later from his stories, the rumor was not entirely false either. We sat down one in front of the other at a small table and carried on with our conversation from the day before. He told me that after winning the Enescu competition he had kept good relations with the Romanian musicians. He had often been invited to play in Romania, but the Chinese authorities had not always allowed him to come. During the Cultural Revolution he had been sent to a work farm. And? Had he been he tortured? Yes, he had. How? He didn't want to talk about it. He said that he was not only banned from touching the piano for a few years, but also had to perform tasks intended to ruin his nimble fingers. And? Had they succeeded? Yes, they had. Unfortunately, the cruelty with which the Revolution had treated him ended his career as a pianist. And what happened afterwards? After a time he returned to the piano, but he no longer was the same. He loved Romanian music dearly and made a few recordings at a Romanian recording House. He spoke with warm passion about Romania and said that Enescu's music was a universal asset. I asked him if he still played. No, he no longer did that, he only taught. He offered me one of his recordings made in China with Beethoven's 5th concerto on a vinyl plate. I have listened to it many times since and each time I am touched anew by the beauty of the piano's sounds, and disturbed by his destiny. We parted as friends, promising that we would keep in touch.
A few years afterwards he informed me that he was leaving California and was moving to Hong Kong, and he gave me his new address. When in my turn I had to move to Mississauga, I sent him my new address and phone number. We moved in the fall of 1997. After a first weekend my hu*****and had to return to Montreal, where he was still employed. I was alone in the new dwelling, surrounded by boxes, without my family and without any friends. I went to bed tired and sad, wondering if the decision to quit Montreal had been the right one for me. Shortly after, the phone rang and woke me up. It was the first call since acquiring the new number, and when I answered I heard Li Min Qiang's voice. He was calling from the airport before leaving for Hong Kong, after one day spent in Mississauga with the Chinese Community. Although he had no time to meet me, he was loath leaving without wishing me good luck in my new residence and in my new life. That moment my sadness and loneliness vanished and I realized that neither distance nor time or nationality had limits when it came to a friendship born out of passion for music. A friendship that now and then I like to celebrate by looking with my mind's eyes to the photo album lost a long time ago.
byVeronica Lerner
Email: vlerner@look.ca
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