Music that brims with the joys of spring

原标题：Music that brims with the joys of spring

来源：中国日报英文版

Original Headlines：Music that brims with the joys of spring

Source：中国日报英文版

Xiao Di performs during a solo concert at Birmingham Town Hall in 2019, when she released her Femmes de Legende album that celebrates work by female composers and their inspirations. [Photo provided to China Daily]

The Chinese pianist Xiao Di is a big part of Spring Festival in the UK, Xing Yi reports in London.

After living in the United Kingdom for almost 20 years the pianist Xiao Di is fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese and English, but music is the best language for promoting understanding between people and cultures, she says.

During each Spring Festival since 2012 Xiao has held a concert in the Elgar Concert Hall in Birmingham, in the English Midlands, known as the Didi & Friends Chinese New Year Celebration.

The concert series involves musicians from different genres giving performances at an event that mixes Chinese culture with Western music, offering British audiences another way to celebrate the traditional Chinese festival.

"One of my aspirations is to be a cultural ambassador, using art to break down cultural barriers and bring people together, and it's a role I take very seriously," said Xiao, who was born in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, and who started learning piano when she was 4.

She went on to train at China's top music institution, the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where she gained bachelor's and master's degrees.

She later completed a doctoral degree at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and became the first Chinese piano professor at the institution.

The Spring Festival concert series had a very humble beginning.

"It was only me and two other friends, who were invited by the China Institute of the University of Birmingham to give a small concert to celebrate the Lunar New Year," Xiao said. "We played classical chamber music, but the audience felt that it lacked Chinese elements for the Chinese festival."

In ensuing years Xiao tried to introduce Chinese music and other creative elements, such as Chinese opera and Chinese instruments, and she invited other musicians, both professional and amateur, to join in.

This February the concert featured 16 artists, including a solo percussionist, Wang Beibei, a Chinese traditional dance artist, Zhou Hangyu, and a Sichuan Opera artist, Zhao Shuai, who gave performances to a packed house of 600 people.

The British musicians Max Gittings and Mike Skelton also contributed, playing the Chinese traditional instrument hulusi, or gourd flute, and the sanxian, a three-string lute.

"The Spring Festival concert has become an annual cultural highlight in the city," Xiao said, adding that Mike Whitby, a member of the House of Lords, and Li Liyan, cultural minister counselor at the Chinese embassy in London, attended this year's concert.

Because of COVID-19 restrictions Xiao could only hold online concerts in the preceding two years. When the restrictions were lifted for this year's event, tickets sold out in five minutes.

"I was so moved when I saw the hall was full of the audience again," Xiao said. "It motivated me to continue organizing the Spring Festival concert, and next year will be the 12th edition. It will be significant to the project because 12 years are a cycle in traditional Chinese philosophy."

Xiao Di and other performers gather for a group photo at this year's Didi & Friends Chinese New Year Celebration in Birmingham. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Prestigious venues

Xiao arrived in the UK in 2005, studying under a full scholarship at Birmingham Conservatoire under Mark Racz. After completing her studies she was selected for the European Concert Halls Organisation's Rising Star program for the 2008-09 season, during which she toured Europe and gave recitals in prestigious venues in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain.

Among all the performances she has given over the years, Xiao still vividly remembers playing in a small church in the West Midlands during her first winter in the UK, where, feeling homesick, she played a traditional tune from her hometown as an encore, a lullaby that her mother used to hum to her at bedtime.

When the recital finished, an elderly man approached Xiao with tears in his eyes, telling her he had recently lost his mother and thanking her for the encore, which he said gave him much comfort.

"I have played in many prestigious venues since then, but that particular connection remains one of my fondest memories," Xiao said, noting that, since then, she has often combined both Chinese and Western repertoire in the programing of her concerts.

Xiao often returns to China to give master classes, lectures and concerts. However, the exchanges were interrupted by the pandemic until May, when she released a new album and held a solo concert tour in a dozen Chinese cities, including Beijing, Guangzhou and Nanjing.

The new album, To Spring, includes pieces that pay tribute to the season by famous composers, including Tchaikovsky's Song of the Lark and Mendelssohn's Spring Song, and also a creation by Xiao from spring last year, which, in hindsight, was effectively the last period of the pandemic.

"During the lockdown a folk song from my hometown came to my mind. It was a song taught by a music teacher when I was in primary school. Amid this tough time the beautiful melody was both new and familiar, adding bittersweet flavors as I missed China so much."

She combined the ballad with a new harmony on the piano, creating the nostalgic solo Wistful Spring.

"Spring is a symbol of hope, love and rebirth. Just as the poet Percy Shelley said: 'If winter comes, can spring be far behind?'"

想爆料？请登录《阳光连线》（ http://minsheng.iqilu.com/）、拨打新闻热线0531-66601253，或登录齐鲁网官方微博（@齐鲁网）提供新闻线索。齐鲁网广告热线0531-66601253，诚邀合作伙伴。