As leaders meet, musicians from the Philadelphia Orchestra tour China
President Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping will face a host of thorny geopolitical issues in San Francisco on Wednesday: trade, Taiwan and the war between Israel and Hamas.
But they have found common ground culturally. Both leaders have praised the visit of a delegation of Philadelphia Orchestra musicians to China in recent days.
The musicians arrived there last week to mark the 50th anniversary of the orchestra’s celebrated visit to Beijing in 1973, when it hosted the first American ensemble to act in communist-led China as the two countries worked to restore official ties.
With relations between the United States and China at their lowest point in four decades, their leaders have emphasized the role of music in easing tensions.
Mr. Biden said in a recent letter to the orchestra that the visit this month could help “forge even closer cultural ties that would forever symbolize the power of connection and collaboration.”
Mr Xi said in a letter released on Friday that the Philadelphia Orchestra had long played a role in strengthening the connection between the two countries, describing his 1973 visit as an “ice-breaking journey”.
“Music has the power to transcend boundaries,” he wrote, “and culture can build bridges between hearts.”
Daniel R Russella former senior U.S. diplomat who now works at the Asia Society Policy Institute said cultural exchange could build connections between China and the United States and help “refute political caricatures” that citizens of each country might have.
But there are limits, he said, given the heated rhetoric and increasingly intense rivalry between Beijing and Washington over national security and economic issues.
“It’s a very thin thread to tie together such a big hole in the relationship,” he said.
On Friday, a dozen musicians from the Philadelphia Orchestra joined their counterparts from the China National Symphony Orchestra for a concert at the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing. The program included Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, Leonard Bernstein’s overture from ‘Candide’ and Chinese folk songs.
“It was an incredibly powerful moment,” said Matías Tarnopolsky, president and general manager of the orchestra. “It had the effect of drawing attention to art and culture and the beauty and power of music to create change.”
The visit of the Philadelphia musicians, who also travel to Shanghai, Suzhou and Tianjin, has received a lot of attention in China. Many news outlets in recent days have published nostalgia-filled stories about the 1973 visit, in which the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Eugene Ormandy, performed to a packed house in Beijing, a year after President Richard M. Nixon’s historic visit.
At the time, China was in the final years of the Cultural Revolution, during which most traditional music, including Western classical music, was banned. Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong’s wife, arranged for the concert – featuring a favorite work, Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony (known as the “Pastorale”) – to be broadcast nationwide.
The orchestra has been all over Chinese state media in recent days. An article about Mr Xi’s letter to the orchestra appeared on Saturday front page from People’s Daily, the main newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, just moments before the announcement that Mr Xi would meet Mr Biden in San Francisco. China Central Television, the state broadcaster, broadcast interviews in which Philadelphia Orchestra staff and musicians praised Mr. Xi’s letter.
The focus on the orchestra’s visit reflects the Chinese government’s recent efforts to boost its global image by emphasizing more personal ties, said David Bandurski, co-director of the China Media Project, an independent research program based in the United States.
“Emphasizing people-to-people exchanges is a way to highlight the positives from the Chinese leadership’s point of view,” he said. “They also hark back to an earlier time when ping pong was enough to bring both parties back to the table.”