Swan song
- Li Lu
At 00:39 a.m. on October 19, 2001, my loving father left us, and I couldn't help but think of another musical old man, my father's close friend, the famous violinist Isaac Stern, whose death made the closing concert of the second Beijing International Music Festival on November 19, 1999 the timeless singing of these two old people.
Twenty years ago, the world-famous violinist Stern visited Beijing and filmed a documentary film, From Mao Zedong to Mozart, which won an Academy Award. Stern's visit was like opening a window between China and the world, giving the world an understanding of China and china of the world. To commemorate this historic event, the Beijing International Music Festival is ready to invite Mr. Stern to visit China again and to perform again with my father, Li Delun, the mozart's Violin Concerto No. 3, which they performed 20 years ago. In addition, the festival also arranged for three children who studied music in the film (twenty years later they have become world-renowned musicians and professors) to play Beethoven's triple concerto at the concert. In order to be able to realize this plan, Long Yu, music director of the Beijing International Music Festival, made a special trip to New York in 1998 to visit the violin master Mr. Stern, who was very happy to hear the news and humorously said: "You want people to know how old we are!" (You're trying to let everyone know how old we are!) My father knew very well that the significance of this concert was extraordinary, and he was actively preparing for it.
Contrary to his wishes, in mid-September 1999, my father felt very uncomfortable, could not eat, and went to the Sino-Japanese Hospital to see a doctor, the doctor said that it was tracheitis, and he prescribed some medicine and went home. The mother was still not at ease, and found an acquaintance to contact Hepingli Hospital, ready to go to Hepingli Hospital to check it out. Just the day before I went to Hepingli Hospital, my father suddenly squirted vomit in the middle of the night, and everything he spat out was coffee-colored, and my mother immediately asked for help to send my father to the emergency room of Xiehe Hospital.
When I arrived at Union Hospital, I learned that I had pneumonia after examination, and the coffee-colored thing was stomach bleeding (my father's hemoglobin was 5 grams at the time), and accompanied by kidney failure (my father had kidney cancer in 1978, and there was only one kidney after surgery), and the situation was very serious. It is very dangerous for an eighty-year-old person to get pneumonia, not to mention other complications, when the doctor at the hospital told her mother that her father was very ill and could not be cured, so she was mentally prepared. After the medical staff of Union Hospital made every effort to rescue him, his condition did not stabilize until about 11:00 a.m. the next day.
At that time, none of our three children were around their parents, I was in Cyprus, my sister Xiaoyan was in Canada, my brother Xiaosu was in the United States, and my mother did not want her children to worry about their father, until my father's condition was basically stable, and then he notified me to come back to take care of my father. I received my mother's E-mail and immediately asked the head of the embassy for leave to return to Beijing. As soon as my mother saw me, tears couldn't help but flow down, these days her pressure is too much, not only because of the fatigue of running the hospital every day with metal heart valves, but more importantly, mental pressure; the day of the closing ceremony of the Beijing International Music Festival on November 19 is getting closer and closer, Stern is about to arrive in Beijing, Beijing is full of posters of concerts, and my father is so sick, "Act, or don't act" like a famous quote from Shakespeare's famous book "Hamlet", "To be or not to." be that is a question!" weighs heavily on everyone's heart.
"Not acting", is it like saying goodbye to the cause that you have struggled for all your life? Make all people feel regret and disappointment? This concert is not just a simple concert, it is the agreement between father and Stern at the end of the century! "Acting", can the elderly sick body support it? And at the risk of being reinfected in a public place, what does it mean for a person in their eighties to be reinfected when they are extremely weak? Needless to say, all the people understand very well. Relatives and friends, leaders of the organizing committee and various departments frequently called and asked the same question: "Acting or not acting?" "Can it work?" "Don't act!" When I got off the plane and rushed to the hospital, my father cried when he saw me. I saw my father lying sick in bed, his face pale, with an oxygen tube in his nose, and I gently leaned over my father's ear and asked, "Can I perform concert on the 19th?" My father said to me in a weak voice, "Yes...". I was shocked by his answer, and it seemed that the old man had opened up the cause that he had worked for all his life. In order to avoid re-infection, so that the father could calm down and prepare for the concert, the hospital posted a note on the door of the ward to "refuse to visit". Under the care of his family and Xiao Lanzi, a girl from the countryside of northern Shaanxi, and under the supervision of twenty-four hours of special care, the father began to prepare for the concert at the end of the century.
On the afternoon of November 18, accompanied by his family and special care, my father came to the Century Theater to rehearse before the performance. When we pushed our father backstage in a wheelchair into the Century Theater, we were immediately surrounded by reporters. In order to enable my father to calm down and rehearse, we pushed my father to a corner of the stage, when old Stern was on the stage with his son Little Stern rehearsing the concert program, when he saw his father in a wheelchair, he played the piano while walking to his father, and when the last note ended, the two old people hugged each other tightly, and the people watching the rehearsal, including the players of the Chinese Symphony Orchestra who were rehearsing on the stage, were all moved.
Rehearsing Mozart's Violin Concerto began, his father wore a red sweater and sat on the podium, and all the people sweated for him. The father took the baton and beat the first beat, and Mozart's music resounded throughout the theater. An old man in his eighties, his sick father, the conductor is still as loose and fluent as then, the mind is still as sober as then, he uses his hands to control the whole orchestra very well, playing Mozart's music very beautifully, with the development of music, every part, every phrase is clearly explained. That's great! Father and Stern, two eighty-year-old people, cooperated very tacitly, and the two old men used their lifetime of musical experience to interpret Mozart's music impeccablely, and many music professionals present praised it one after another: "This is the real Mozart!" ”
The rehearsal went smoothly, how I wished to take a few more photos of my father as a souvenir, but I was afraid that the flash of my fool's camera would disturb his old man's rehearsal, so I gently walked over to Chen Xiong, a photographer who was very familiar with my family, and said to him: "You must take more pictures, this may be my father's last rehearsal." When I finished speaking and walked away, Chen Xiong could not control his feelings, tears flowed down the camera, and the frame was blurred...
When the rehearsal was over, my father was surrounded by reporters, reporters from CCTV, Beijing Television, and CNN, and a crew that accompanied Stern to shoot the documentary (one of the old men had been here twenty years earlier). These people asked their father many questions, and he answered them one by one, and although his body was very tired, he was still quick and talkative. A CNN reporter from the United States pushed aside the crowd and crawled to his father on his knees and asked a more pointed question: "Twenty years ago in a movie, you asked you a lot about Mozart, and you said a lot, and then Stern interrupted you and said: 'He's a genius.'" Did you change that view later? My father replied, "At that time, the Cultural Revolution had just ended, because during the Cultural Revolution, the 'theory of genius' had been criticized, so at that time I could not only talk about genius, I could only talk about the emergence of composers like Mozart because of the background of the times at that time." In fact, I agree with Stern, because the background of that era is the same for everyone, why is mozart so famous? CnN reporter also asked: "Is it possible to ignore political factors now?" The father immediately said: "The background of the times is still there, but everything cannot be dogmatic, and it should be recognized that there is genius." He cleverly answered the reporter's question.
The day of the performance finally came, on the evening of November 19, 1999, the beijing century theater was crowded with people, and on this day, there were many people who returned tickets, and people were looking forward to witnessing the "singing" of the two old people at the end of the century. The Organizing Committee of the Beijing Music Festival specially invited Mr. YingRuocheng, a famous performing artist and a good friend of the two elderly people, as the host of the concert, and his humorous words and proficient English allowed the Chinese and foreign audiences to appreciate the changes in the past twenty years.
In the first half, Wang Jian, Xu Weiling and Pan Chun, who had played for Stern in a red scarf twenty years ago and have become world-famous musicians twenty years later, played Beethoven's triple concerto for everyone. Twenty years of changes, not only the changes of these three children, but more importantly, the Chinese music industry has become more mature after twenty years, China has its own concert hall, music festivals, international competitions, etc., and more children will become famous musicians in the new century.
The second half began, the moment people were looking forward to finally arrived, after Yingruocheng introduced to the audience, the father sat in a wheelchair, was pushed onto the stage by the conductor Beijing International Music Festival music director Yu Long and his father's most beloved grandson Kemin, at this time the theater erupted into warm applause, while two young conductors Li Xincao and Yang Yang ran on the stage from the other side to help help his father to the podium. The white-haired Stern stepped up with a violin, and thunderous applause erupted in the theater.
When Stern stood in the center of the stage, the theater was silent, and people were waiting for the end of the 20th century. The two old men looked at each other silently for a moment, Stern nodded his head lightly to his father, the father raised the baton in his hand, Mozart's music suddenly filled the music hall of the beijing Century Theater, people held their breath, as this beautiful music soared in the vast music hall, as if drunk; people's eyes were blurred, they were touched by this beautiful music and the two old men's unforgettable love for music, and the eyes of the players on the stage were also blurred, and they forced their tears. Not to let the tears wet the instrument they were playing, they were touched by Stern's exquisite playing skills and vivid expression of Mozart's music, touched by their father's clear and unmistakable gestures and deep understanding of Mozart's music, and they were also touched by their own performance.
The concert was over, the whole stage was submerged in a sea of flowers, and the thunderous applause and cheers lasted forever...
The two old men are gone, but their music will always echo in the temple of music in our hearts.
