A fine master

Gray Graffman (left) and Lang Lang (right) perform Johannes Brahms' Sonata for Two Pianos in F minor at a concert in Beijing's National Center for the Performing Arts on Nov 29.[Photo provided to China Daily]

American pianist Gray Graffman has ties to China that go back to a time even before he met his famous Chinese students. Chen Jie interviews the musician.

American classical pianist Gray Graffman, 86, is better known in China as Chinese pianist Lang Lang's teacher. Graffman has also taught Wang Yuja and Zhang Haochen, two other talented internationally reputed Chinese pianists. On Nov 29, Graffman and Lang Lang performed together Johannes Brahms' Sonata for Two Pianos in F minor, at a Steinway anniversary concert in Beijing's National Center for the Performing Arts.

Graffman is used to being referred to as "Lang Lang's teacher" whenever he plays in China. Not that he minds it and neither do his various other students.

Very few Chinese know that Graffman had made a name for himself worldwide as a pianist by the age of 20. But he sprained a finger in his right hand in 1977, and the injury forced him to play limited repertoires written for left-handed players of the piano. He joined the Philadelphia-based faculty of Curtis Institute of Music in 1980 and became its president in 1995.

But his family background should be even more interesting to Chinese.

Graffman's father lived in Shanghai and Harbin for a time before World War II, when he conducted a small orchestra of Russian musicians. Later, the family emigrated to the United States.

The pianist is a big fan of ancient Chinese art and his first 30 trips to the country had little to do with music.

In 1981, five years after the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) ended, Western musicians such as Isaac Stern and Claudio Abbado were able to perform in China, and Graffman embarked on his first trip with a group of museum curators and collectors.

"It was quite another world. There was no cars, but millions of bicycles. In three weeks, we visited not only Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu but smaller cities, including Yixing and Jingdezhen where Chinese porcelain was made," Graffman tells China Daily.

But during that trip, he received a phone call when he came to Beijing. It was from the Central Conservatory of Music. It was the conservatory's head who had heard that Graffman was in town and wanted to invite him to the conservatory.

"He spoke no English and I spoke a little Chinese. How could we talk? Then I realized, he was some 10 years older than me. At the time, Chinese musicians studied music in the former Soviet Union so I asked him if he did, and he said 'yes'. Then we talked in Russian," says Graffman, who is of Russian-Jewish descent.

He was taken to the conservatory where he met an American soprano who was doing a master program there.

Ever since, Graffman has returned to China almost every year but not all his trips were related to music. He usually spends weeks traveling through different provinces and regions to discover more about Chinese culture.

In 2004, he played in China for the first time, with China Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Russian-born Vladimir Ashkenazy. Then he returned a few times including for a recital at the Beijing Music Festival in 2009.

"If you hear all my students, you would know that they are all from the same teacher. But of course, they are all different (individuals)," he says. "Their approach to life and to music are different. But they are all very convincing because they are all talented."

Asked which he would prefer, playing or teaching, Graffman says that teaching was not his first preference. But because of the quality of his students, it has become a pleasure to teach.

"If your students are Lang Lang, Yuja and Haochen, you learn yourself, too."

The maestro says he knows that Chinese are interested in learning music. "If you see a student walking in the streets in China, without carrying a violin, it means he is a pianist," he jokes.

He says now many Chinese families－much like many Jewish and Russian families in the past－insist on picking up musical skills.

Graffman himself was asked to play the violin at age 3. One year later, his father thought he had no talent in violin so he asked him to play the piano.

"Talent is the thing you really cannot learn. You can develop your taste, practise the approach of different composers. But without talent, you just play notes－signifying nothing. Everything else you have to learn."

Different things work on different people, he says, adding that passion for the piano can also work as a pressure on some people when they are young.

He says when he was 7 or 8, he was supposed to play the piano from 3 to 5 pm every day. If it was 5 past 3, and he hadn't started playing it, his father would remind him to do so. "If you like doing something, you don't feel bored," he says.