Fu Lei's Letter Home to me

I've been listening to classical music for over a decade now, since I was in high school. Speaking of Fu Lei's Letter Home to me is very familiar, at that time every day in the Chinese classical music forum, the audience talk about concerts, records, artists, talk about the comparison of Chinese and Western culture, of course, Fu Lei and his music criticism is not unfamiliar. It was the most important period for my mental and spiritual growth after going abroad, and it was also a time when I felt carefree and happy. However, I never wrote anything about this book and this person, perhaps because I had come into contact with so much that I did not care much about it. Thanks to this reading [1] after so many years, I finally have the opportunity to sit down and talk about what I know about this book.

This "Letter Home" is almost universally known to a generation of music fans who grew up in China in the 1980s. It happened that these people were also the first generation of college students and intellectuals after the end of the Cultural Revolution. The fragrance of Western culture came in from outside their gradually opened homes, which made many young people with spiritual hunger really moved and reveled in it. Harsh child-rearing ideas aside, perhaps the most valuable aspect of "Letters Home" for most music fans was the honest communication between father and son about art. Fu Lei's views on many musicians and musical works, in our opinion, can be used to listen to and read against the works, and therefore, it can be a good artistic enlightenment reading. When I look at some of Fu Lei's comments at that time, in fact, they are no more unique and profound than some veteran music fans, and Fu Lei's comments are just his own opinion. Even so, we should understand that in that crazy time, there was still such a family in China with such dedication and passion for art, especially Western art, and such parents cared so much about the spiritual growth of their children. This is how incredible and rare it seems today. As Chen Danqing would lament, it would be hard to find "that kind of parent writing that kind of letter home to their children."

As mhh says, Fu Cong rarely writes back to his father. She puts forward two objective reasons, both of which make sense. Personally, I think another reason is that they never got on well with each other. This is because Mr. Fu Lei's character is the kind of traditional literati literati type, fortitude, straightness, hatred, and family discipline is very strict. At this time if the son inherited this kind of character, then two characters have angles together will be very painful. Moreover, I think there should be a rebellious element in Fu Cong's personality. He grew up under the influence of the traditional idea of "filial piety", so the relationship between father and son is very difficult to reconcile, which we can read from Fu Cong's mother in the "Letter Home". This kind of character of Fu Lei is also a very important factor in the tragedy of his life later. He is a martyr figure, a tragic hero, just like Beethoven and Johann Kristof in his translation, always entangled with fate, and his heart may also be such a figure, admiration for these ideal personality and imagination in turn subtly shaped his own personality. It is always hard to forget his famous words in the preface of Beethoven: "Only real suffering can drive out the suffering of romantic Decker's fantasy; Only overcome the suffering of the heroic tragedy, to help us bear the cruel fate; Only with the spirit of 'if I don't go to hell, he will go to hell' can we save a flagging and selfish nation." He finally gave the best interpretation of this statement through his own life. It is no accident that this phrase was later used by students on hunger strike during the political turmoil of 1998 and 2009.

Tell me about Fu Cong. Personally, I think he is the most important pianist in China in the 20th century. In today's Chinese music world, if there is a master, I think it is Fu Cong. Of course China has Lang Lang, Li Yundi, Chen Sa, these young people are talented of course, but they are still young, my feeling is that young people better not give them too much glory, otherwise it will ruin them. When Heifetz said that the word "child prodigy" ruined many young talents, he really told some truth about the literary and art world. For an artist, I think it is more important to learn and accumulate life experience and knowledge, because these things add thickness and breadth to one's art, making it more dense, profound, worth thinking about and worthy of scrutiny. Just like wine, the older it gets, the better it tastes. We look at Mr. Fu Cong. He is such a man who has experienced many vicissitudes. Although he was away from the country for many years, from the 1950s onwards, the family was under constant attack, from all sides of the pressure and abuse, and finally the family was broken up. We cannot imagine how much it would have affected him psychologically and spiritually. Moreover, he has been drifting overseas for years, the disaster of his family, the homesickness of a wanderer, the cultural conflict in a foreign land, the failure of his marriage life, when these factors are combined with a person, they may produce a certain "chemical reaction" on the person, forging and tempering his soul, the so-called steel.

I was lucky enough to see one of his concerts in Qingdao in the spring of 2013. He played late works by German and Austrian composers, a late Beethoven sonata, a late Schubert sonata, and several Scarlatti sonatas. Mr. Fu Cong, who is more than 80 years old, shows the introspection and introspection of Beethoven's late sonatas with a calm attitude. It is so calm and easy, almost like the performer is telling his own story, without exaggeration and pretense, also without juvenile rash and swagger. It should be noted that this is an old man over 80 playing the works of a composer who is also in the sunset of his life. This is Beethoven's swan song, and perhaps also Fu Cong's own elegy. His Scarlatti also has a pure and clear air, really like the experience of "knowing the taste of sorrow", leaving the past to the past, but in front of people just a faint smile, say "the weather is cold." At the end of the last song, Fu Cong stood up to take a curtain call to the audience. He looked at the audience, nodded slightly, smiled, and walked behind the scenes. His mood was always peaceful.

It is worth noting that at the reading meeting, mhh finally asked the friends present who had read the "Letters Home". I don't seem to remember anyone raising their hands. It seems that even this easy-to-understand book is gradually disappearing.