I dedicate this inaugural blog of THE ADLER PROJECT to my father, Sheng Mingliang
The luthier picks up my violin from the case, and quickly flips it around by the neck, glancing at it up and down. I don’t know if he’s being casual or if this is his professional way of handling violins. But I worry the violin might swing out of his hold and drop to the floor! As the instrument flies in between his hands, the luthier softly comments, “the neck and fingerboard are narrower than standard, so is the scroll – but that’s just the individuality of the artisan, it doesn’t affect the sound; the belly is bulgier, both on the top and back; the bridge is a bit too high, but then, the fingerboard is also perking too high an angle.” As he comments, his assistant uses a small metal ruler to take measures to verify his observations. The flipping stops, and he gives me a faint smile, “The violin is a little different from today’s standard templates. I’d say it’s from the typical mock-up templates produced in Eastern Europe. Honestly, it’s not a high-value instrument. But thank you for showing me.” He nods at me, hands the violin to his assistant, and leaves the room.
I know the luthier, as highly regarded in his profession as he is, must have seen and handled many “Strads” and “Guaneris”. Understandably he has little interest in the history of this “just another violin”, the history that gives it much sentimental value to my family.
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My father bought it 70 years ago in Bulgaria, at a time when a new China was rising from the ruins of WWII and a massive civil war, and the Korean Peninsula was plunged into one of the bloodiest “regional” hot conflicts in the heightening Cold War. In 1951, the newly-born People’s Republic of China was invited by the Eastern Block to attend the 3rd World Festival of Youth and Students in Berlin. My father and uncle, both teenage students of the Youth Program of the Central Conservatory of Music, were picked to join the China Youth Artists Group as the delegation representing the new brotherly socialist state.
For the new China with over half a billion people, this invitation and the international recognition it brought was a big deal. The Ministry of Culture sent officials to various cities and regions across the country to search for programs and performers. By the Spring of 1951, 222 young musicians, dancers, actors and stage technicians were recruited from arts organizations and schools. By June, all were convened to Beijing to officially form the China Youth Artists Group and go through a month-long training and preparation before embarking on a chartered train on July 16th heading to the Soviet Union.
For my father and uncle, this tour was another kind of a big deal. War-orphaned during the Japanese invasion and occupation of China, the two brothers were recruited by the State Conservatory Junior Program near the end of the WWII. They were afforded free room and board, instruments, even European musicians from the Shanghai Municipal Orchestra as faculty. Yet all did not last long under the intensifying civil war. By 1948, most instructors had to evacuate, foreign teachers either emigrated or returned to their home countries. Their principal died at sea trying to relocate the school to Taiwan. As the civil war concluded in China in 1949, the stranded music school was merged into the Central Conservatory of Music Youth Program in 1950. The teenage brothers had a life of peace and future musical career to look forward to in a new era. The World Festival of Youth and Students launched them onto the international stage much sooner than they had dreamed of.
Propaganda as the programs were, the exotic oriental colours and sounds made the young Chinese artists superstars at the festival in Berlin. Immediately after the festival, countries in the Eastern Bloc, including Soviet-occupied Austria, invited them to perform, making a one-event mission into a year-long grand tour of Eastern Europe. East Germany, Hungary, Romania, Austria, Poland, Bulgaria, Albania, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, all nine countries they had only known from textbooks and newspapers, now welcomed them as distinguished state guests from the new communist power in the East! For almost all of the young Chinese delegates, this was the first time that they set foot outside of China. But for the musicians in particular, Europe was the birthplace of classical music, the discipline they were learning. Being able to tour the cities where great composers such as Beethoven, Mozart, Bach or Chopin lived and worked, and perform at venues where these greats left their footprints, and learned from European musicians while on tour, was an experience that no university education could ever offer.
Though post-war Europe was struggling to revive from the rubbles, and political turmoil was a ubiquitous undercurrent in all the rallies and events they participated in, the Chinese young men and women were still amazed by the industrial feat they saw, such as the German autobahn, which took them from Berlin to Dresden, Chemnitz, all the way to Leipzig. Meanwhile, they also saw incredible poverty in Eastern Europe – kids in Poland and Bulgaria running around with no shoes and hardly enough to eat, while they the Chinese guests were treated with luxurious state banquets.
For this tour, the Chinese government equipped the delegation with everything: the nice suits they wore, the instruments they played. But the artists themselves own none of these. Father had always dreamed of owning his own violin, ever since he had started learning music. As an impoverished orphan, he simply couldn’t have afforded any. Even the cabinet lumber violins and cellos made by a local carpenter had been procured and provided by the State Conservatory Junior Program.
In addition to feeding them well, the hosting countries also paid them generously – in each country’s local money. As a gesture to support the Anti-Imperialist War in Korea, the delegation decided to withhold half of the remuneration to donate to the Resist US and Aid Korea (抗美援朝) movement in China. Even so, father and his fellow delegates still ended up having a lot of cash in their pockets, so much that they had probably never seen in their lives.
In April 1952, they arrived in Sofia, Bulgaria. Father’s chance came when the delegation organized a shopping trip to a music store in downtown Sofia. While many others were busy selecting scores of famous classical composers, Father set his eyes on the only violin hanging on the wall. Without hesitation, he pulled out the 10,000 levs he had stashed away in the past couple of weeks and bought the violin – without the bow. Father had no idea how much 10,000 levs in 1952 was actually worth, but he knew if he didn’t spend it, by the time they moved on to another country, this money would be wasted. It was only 70 years later, that I found out through research that, in the early to mid-1950s, a number of Eastern European countries were going through monetary reforms as part of nationalization. The actual value against the US dollar was tremendously distorted but 10,000 levs was estimated to be roughly US$14. Later when they toured Romania, father also bought a bow in Bucharest with 100 Romanian leus.
For an astronomical amount of approximately US$20, father, who barely turned 20 years old at the time, owned his first violin. Years later, as I was learning violin and grew big enough to play full-size (I started with ¾ size violin), father decided to give this violin to me. But somehow my musician’s dream didn’t come true and the instrument was stashed away in the closet again for the next 30 years – father bought newer violins for his professional use.
Life comes in circles and now my daughter is learning the violin, albeit still a ¾ size. With some hope of passing this family heirloom along, I brought this violin from Beijing back to Canada. And I asked my daughter’s violin teacher Alessia to try to play it for me. With her professional touch, the instrument made a nice, smooth, chocolatey sound! Alessia suggested having it appraised and repaired professionally, and recommended one of the best violin makers and dealers in Toronto, hence the scene at the beginning of this story. I’m not at all disappointed by the appraisal. After 70 years, this violin, with all its stories and history, is and will be our family heirloom for generations to come.
A couple of months ago, I played on this violin with my daughter in an improvised jamming session and sent the video to my parents in Beijing. Father, now 90, was unable to hear much of violin playing due to years of slow hearing deterioration. But Mother told me she showed the video to Father anyway, and the old man was happy hearing (or seeing) his old friend sing again.
After over 35 years not playing, I now often practice together with my daughter on “grandpa’s violin”. She is proud to have a violinist grandfather. One day she says to me, “Dad, we should name her ‘Sophia’, because Grandpa bought it in Sofia!”
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