Chinese to Perform With Seoul Phil

By Bae Keun-min

Staff Reporter

Jiang Zemin, former General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, listened to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s ``Requiem’’ as solace in mourning the death of Deng Xiaoping in 1997.

This famous anecdote shows how the community party’s stance toward classical music has changed: The party tried to obliterate classical music some 30 years earlier, condemning it as a vestige of Western bourgeois culture.

However, the party now perceives the music as an essential element of advanced culture and as an object necessary for its promotion to its becoming a true power in the world.

In accordance with the burgeoning of the Chinese economy, over 30 million children are reportedly taking regular piano lessons while some 10 million are learning violin classes, and the nation is well represented among winners of international competitions. China has manufactured some 370,000 pianos, some 1 million violins and 60,000 guitars last year, putting its name on the list of major instrument producers.