Capital radio

Beijing is buzzing - and not just thanks to the Olympics. A spirit of musical enterprise has taken root in the capital and western classical music is booming. Alternative forms of music are thriving, too. This is the scene that greeted Jonathan Douglas as he set off to sound out the city's blossoming music scene for a recently launched RTHK Radio 4 documentary series. Pitch Perfect in Beijing began last Friday as part of the music and arts channel's latest programming reshuffle. The four-part series aims to give listeners the opportunity to explore and gain insight into the capital's musical dynamism, Douglas says. 'The Olympics have focused attention on Beijing. I would like my shows to demonstrate there's a great deal more to the city than sport.' The long-time host of Radio 4 breakfast show Morning Call admits he's still far from unravelling the capital's music scene, especially its politics. But in drawing together the views of a wide range of people involved in it, he has sought to convey the enormous variety of musical activity in the city and the invigorating atmosphere he found there. 'It seems there is a hunger on the part of audiences and those performing and creating - a blossoming of the arts in Beijing in a very exciting way,' he says. For the series, Douglas spoke to leading classical music personalities, people discovering the western repertoire, people with international exposure and others without. He visited the Central Conservatory of Music and the China Conservatory of Music. He attended performances at the National Centre for the Performing Arts and the Forbidden City Concert Hall. Douglas didn't just do the rounds of the city's major venues, but also ventured off the beaten track to explore experimental, underground music being played elsewhere. The wave of xenophobic nationalism that followed Olympic flame protests in London and Paris in early April raised the possibility of a less-than-cordial welcome for the Briton in Beijing, but he was assisted by an ex-girlfriend of his best friend and Rudolph Tang, editor of Gramophone China. Douglas saw who he wished, was able to interview concert-goers and did not have to show a list of potential interviewees to anyone. The main problem came later, in an apt reflection of the buoyancy of the Beijing scene: there was far too much material for just four shows. Among the many figures Douglas interviewed were composers Chen Yi and Tan Dun, Beijing Symphony Orchestra music director Tan Lihua, Beijing National Symphony Orchestra principal resident conductor Li Xincao, China Philharmonic Orchestra concertmaster Chen Yun and National Centre for the Performing Arts vice-president Yang Jingmao. Douglas was also invited to the home of composer Wu Zuqiang, honorary president of the Central Conservatory of Music and a major force in classical music on the mainland. Now in his 80s, Wu played a key role in teaching the conservatory's composition class of 1978, who were among the first batch of students to enter the institution after it reopened following the Cultural Revolution. His students included Chen and Tan. Wu is also director of the arts committee at the National Centre for the Performing Arts, and discussed with Douglas the facility's impact on the development of the arts and a new venue for chamber music under construction at the site. 'Here was someone who had gone through all the tumult of post-war China,' Douglas says. 'It was a great privilege to talk to him.' Another striking encounter was with author, vocalist and Chinese blues player Liu Sola in her studio in the 798 Art District. With vocals at the heart of what she creates, Liu - also a member of the class of 1978 - has taken a radical path as a composer, Douglas says. 'It is interesting that Beijing can nurture and accommodate such people. On one hand, you hear of 30 million youngsters learning the piano, which sounds almost like mass production. But on the other, you have extraordinary individual spirits such as Liu Sola.' Eventually, from all the material Douglas gathered, themes took shape. His first programme focused on change in Beijing. Although classical music remained the core subject, the show also ranged further afield, looking at Beijing audiences' growing appetite for live performances and including an interview with Michael Pettis, a US associate professor of finance at Peking University who runs D-22, a boundary-busting indie music club. His remaining shows will take in 'maestros and orchestras', 'venues' and 'composers and new directions in performance and programming'. Internationalisation - both Chinese musicians on the world stage and the growing attraction of Beijing for those overseas - is a persistent theme. Another is the desire of people in Beijing to expand their cultural horizons. 'The new middle class want their children to have opportunities they didn't have,' Douglas says. 'That was a theme that came up time and again.' Douglas says that obstacles nevertheless remain to the development of Beijing's music scene. Concert hall ticket prices, for instance, are high in relation to average incomes, and the city's orchestras have yet to take their place among the world's best. But he sees an awareness of the problems, a willingness and plenty of energy to tackle them. 'In 10 years, we will remember this conversation,' says Douglas, 'and think how unbelievable it is that things have come so far.' Pitch Perfect in Beijing, Radio 4, Fridays, 7pm; repeated Sundays, noon