Hong Xu, whose parents have come from China to hear him play at Juilliard.
By DANIEL J. WAKIN
A MIDDLE-AGED but youthful-looking couple from the central Chinese city of Wuhan will be sitting proudly in the audience Sunday when Vladimir Ashkenazy leads the Juilliard Orchestra in an open rehearsal and concert at Juilliard’s Peter Jay Sharp Theater.
Their son, Hong Xu, will be at the piano when Mr. Ashkenazy conducts Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3. Until recent days — which included a recital by Mr. Xu at Weill Recital Hall last Saturday — his parents had never heard their son play in the United States. They had been denied visas in 2005 to come for a small-town concert in Pennsylvania, but this time the visas arrived.
So it is now clearer than ever that the 36-hour trips up the Yangtze River for lessons, the good jobs abandoned to follow Mr. Xu (pronounced shoo) in his training and the long hours selling pianos and cleaning conservatory floors to pay for it have borne fruit for the couple, Xiao-Ping Xu and his wife, Yu-Fang Hong. “I actually had tears in my eyes,” the older Mr. Xu said, through a translator, of watching his son at Weill. Ms. Hong said, “All my efforts before are worth it.”
The Xu family’s story — of parental sacrifice; of a son’s migration to the West for training; of his endless, single-minded study — brings together the many strands of one of the most important developments in Western classical music in generations: the rise of China.
With the country’s huge population, cultural vitality, swelling middle class, emulation of things Western and parental devotion to children’s achievement, tens of millions of its people are studying piano, violin and other Western instruments. A wave of talent has begun flowing out in recent years, and Mr. Xu is among the elite of those performers. His teachers, Jerome Lowenthal at the Juilliard School and Douglas Humpherys at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, point to his brilliant technique, soulful lyricism and command of nuance.
“Nothing is really difficult for him, plus he has a deeply expressive musical personality and the ability to convey that to an audience,” Mr. Humpherys said.
Mr. Xu’s route is familiar. At 11, identified for his talent, he began making the long boat journey for twice-monthly lessons from the small town of Wuhu to Wuhan, one of China’s fast-growing cities, an industrial hub on the Yangtze River with a population of seven million. He was admitted to the Wuhan conservatory at 12, and within six months his parents had given up good jobs to move to Wuhan. She had sold jewelry in a department story; he had worked as a marketing official for Wuhu.
In Wuhan Ms. Hong took a cleaning job at the conservatory. Her husband sold and moved pianos at a local shop. In the evening, when their son practiced, his mother sat next to him knitting and guarding the door from distractions.
Then came a twist. In 1997 state television made a documentary about the family, focused on the parents’ sacrifice. It turned the older Mr. Xu into a local celebrity. The owner of the piano store, mindful of the business the publicity could bring, made Mr. Xu a partner. Soon he opened his own instrument store, now one of the largest in Wuhan. The prosperity has helped support Hong Xu’s studies, and his pianistic success has added luster to the store.
He began winning competitions. In June 2001 he entered the Gina Bachauer International Young Artists Competition in Salt Lake City, where Mr. Humpherys was on the jury. Impressed, Mr. Humpherys encouraged Mr. Xu to audition for Eastman. The young pianist won a spot, spent four years in Rochester, then went to Juilliard, where he has entered his second year in the master’s program. A victory in a concerto competition last season led to Sunday’s concert.
Mr. Xu said he had asked his parents to come this week. He wanted them to hear him play — but just as much, to help them understand what the concert pianist’s life was in the United States. They have been agitating to have him return to China, he said, for a comfortable living as a teacher and performer there.
“I always felt my existence was for all people, not just my parents,” he said. “Mostly, I just want them to feel proud of me and to understand my life.”
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