Sheng Mingliang
盛明亮

Sheng Mingliang (盛明亮, September 22, 1932 – January 2, 2023) was born in Nanjing (Nanking as in the Wade-Giles spelling), then the capital city of the Republic of China. His father, Sheng Zhicheng (盛志成, 1887 – 1945) was a paper craftsman, making paper decorations for weddings, funerals and festivities as his business. Mingliang’s mother, with name unknown, as was common in that age for many married women, was a homemaker. Mingliang was the third of four children. When Mingliang was three years old (1935), his mother died of difficult labour while giving birth to her fifth child.

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Fled to Chongqing

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In December 1937, soon after capturing Shanghai, the Japanese Imperial Army was pushing up the Yangtze River toward Nanjing. Before the city fell, Sheng Zhicheng took his four children (aged from 4 to 9) and fled. They took railway or ship whenever they could grab hold of tickets. If they could not, or the transportation simply broke down, they walked. The youngest child, four-year-old boy Mingyao (盛明耀) had to be carried on a carrying stick, while the other children followed on foot. Mingliang was a little over five years old. It took them several months and crossing several provinces before they reached Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei Province. Here, at one of the refugee camps, Mingzhu (盛明珠, “Bright Pearl”), Mingliang’s older sister, the only girl among the four children, fell severely sick. There was no medical attention available. They could do nothing but watch her die. She was seven years old.

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Compassion school and death of Zhicheng

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In late 1938, almost a year after they fled Nanjing, Zhicheng and his three sons reached Chongqing, a city in southwest China, on the shore of upstream Yangtze River. Having just been made “Provisional Capital”, the mountainous city was packed with government organizations, national institutions, and refugees from across the country. The “North Spring Compassion School” (北泉慈幼院), a major refugee shelter on the outskirt of Chongqing, took in the Sheng family. Zhicheng was hired as a caretaker and doorman. Though “Settled”, they were faced with frequent air raids and constant hunger. This took a heavy toll on Zhicheng’s health. He developed chronic asthma, and died in 1945, before the war formally ended in August.  His three sons were left orphaned.

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Auditioning and starting Junior Program

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WWII formally ended in China on August 15, 1995. This meant the Compassion School was near the end of its mandate and about to close. Where to send the children, especially the orphans, became a major challenge. Around the same time, the State Conservatory of Music Junior Program, aiming at training children 8-12 years old classical music, was recruiting from schools and orphanages across Chongqing. Learning of the news, the principal of the Compassion School encouraged all boys to audition, even though some of them didn’t quite fit the age requirement. Sheng Mingliang was turning 13.  With little previous exposure to Western classical music, Sheng Mingliang, his younger brother Sheng Mingyao, were among the over 200 students accepted, out of over 1,000 auditioners. Mingliang was assigned to learn the violin, and Mingyao, the cello.

 

Changzhou and learning from Adler

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In 1946, as part of the State Conservatory of Music, the Junior Program was supposed to return to the capital Nanjing. However, the capital city was too crowded and chaotic to accommodate the whole institution. Hence the Junior Program was relocated to Changzhou, a city between Shanghai and Nanjing. To improve the learning conditions for the students, Professor Wu Po-tchao, President of the State Conservatory of Music and founder of the Junior Program, procured new instruments – real violins and cellos as versus the mock ones made of cabinet lumber and furniture paint. Most importantly, Professor Wu personally went to the Shanghai Municipal Orchestra and invited European musicians as faculty, including concertmaster Ferdinand Adler, principal viola Joseph Podushka, principal cello Igor Shevtsov, etc. Sheng Mingliang was assigned to the class of Ferdinand Adler. As there was a language barrier, teaching was mostly done by gesturing and demonstrations, except occasionally Professor Liao Fushu, an instructor at the Junior Program who was fluent in German and English, helped interpret more complex concepts and techniques. Mr. Adler did help establish a good technical foundation for Sheng Mingliang.

 

Merging into Central Conservatory and European tour with Youth Artists Group

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However, as civil war intensified in China, the foreign teachers’ weekly commute between Shanghai and Changzhou became impossible. After about 18 months, in mid 1947, classes by foreign teachers had to stop. Ferdinand Adler had to take his family – his Shanghai-born daughter was less than two years old – to return to Austria in August 1947, after his eight-year refuge in Shanghai. By late 1948, things went so chaotic, all teaching was halted, with all teachers and many students gone home. For those students with nowhere to go, mostly orphans like the Sheng brothers, only Professor Huang Yuanli, a cello teacher, stayed with them at the school site, supervising their daily practice and ensemble training.

 

Meanwhile, in January 1949, Professor Wu Po-tchao perished at sea while on his way to Taiwan to search for a safer place to relocate the State Conservatory of Music. In April 1949, the advancing People’s Liberation Army (PLA) took over Changzhou. They were nicely surprised to find a group of young music students – the State Conservatory Junior Program stranded in the city. The PLA Military Control Committee asked the Junior Program student body to send some musicians to join their army art troupe. Sheng Mingliang was among those recruited.

 

The Junior Program was faced with dissolving. Professor Huang, on his own initiative, negotiated a deal with the advancing communist authorities to have the Junior Program merged with the Central Conservatory of Music. In early 1950, the new Central Conservatory of Music Youth Program was open in Tianjin, soon to move to Beijing. Sheng Mingliang, along with those who joined the PLA art troupe, rejoined the Youth Program.

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Yet, Sheng Mingliang’s student life was interrupted once more. In 1951, amidst the intensifying Korean War, the newly founded People’s Republic of China was invited by the Eastern Block to attend the Third World Festival of Youth and Students in Berlin. Sheng Mingliang and his younger brother Sheng Mingyao, both teenage students of the Youth Program of the Central Conservatory of Music, were picked to join the China Youth Artists Group as the delegation to represent the new brotherly socialist state.

 

Their performances in Berlin in August 1951 were hugely successful. Immediately after the festival, nine countries in the Eastern Bloc, including East Germany, Hungary, Romania, Poland, Bulgaria, Albania, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, as well as Soviet-occupied Austria, invited them to perform, making a one-event mission into a year-long grand tour of Eastern Europe. During the tour, the young musicians also had opportunities to attend coaching classes by music schools of the hosting countries, such as the Budapest Conservatory.

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Central Song and Dance Troupe to Central Philharmonic Society

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Upon returning to China, the huge success of their tour led the Chinese cultural authority to decide to establish the China Central Song and Dance Troupe, with members of the Youth Artists Group as its backbone. The Sheng brothers didn’t return to the Central Conservatory as previously planned but became working musicians of the orchestra of the Central Song and Dance Troupe. They were just 20 and 19 years old respectively.

 

In 1956, the orchestra of the Central Song and Dance Troupe was carved out to form the Central Philharmonic Society, the de facto national symphony orchestra of China. Sheng Mingliang, Sheng Mingyao, along with a number of Junior Program students became founding members of this organization. One of the highlights of the early years of the Central Philharmonic Society was the premiere of the Chinese version of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 – Ode to Joy in China, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the People's Republic of China in 1959. Sheng Mingliang was part of this historic event, which was broadcast live nationwide; while Sheng Mingyao was studying at the Moscow Conservatory on a Chinese government scholarship with Soviet cellist Sviatoslav Knushevitsky.

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Cultural Revolution, isolation and reopening, US tour

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10 years after the founding of the Central Philharmonic Society, in 1966, the Cultural Revolution was launched. Western classical music was banned as part of the China-only cultural policy led and promoted by Jiang Qing, wife of Mao Zedong. As a music performing organization with Western instrumentation, the Central Philharmonic Society was allowed to perform only symphonifications of the “Eight Model Dramas” and was made one of the Model Troupes.

 

However, during the Cultural Revolution, which lasted from 1966 to 1976, there was a period of relaxation of cultural isolation. After Richard Nixon’s visit to China in 1972, a number of Western countries were invited to send their orchestras to tour China. In 1973 alone, the London Philharmonic led by Sir John Pritchard (in March), the Vienna Philharmonic led by Claudio Abbado (in April) and the Philadelphia Orchestra led by Eugene Ormandy (in September), all toured multiple cities including Beijing and Shanghai, presented multiple programs, and collaborated with Chinese soloists. Although the Central Philharmonic Society itself didn’t participate in any of these concerts, it hosted all these visiting Western orchestras in non-public exchange events. Sheng Mingliang and his fellow Central Philharmonic musicians, played for the Western colleagues and rehearsed under the baton of Western conductors.

 

In 1974, after much political tug of war and delays, the Central Philharmonic Society made a historic tour of Japan, the first of their international tours. Even with all Chinese programs, this tour achieved unprecedented success, leading to further cultural exchange activities between China and Japan.

 

After the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976, China’s door of international cultural exchange reopened. In February 1978, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra led by Sir Andrew Davis became the first major Western orchestra to tour the reopened China. In June 1978, the Central Philharmonic performed Brahms’ Symphony No. 2, under the direction of Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa, its first collaboration with a world-renowned Western musician since the over 10-year ban of Western classical music. Also in 1978, the Central Philharmonic Society relaunched its “Weekly Concert” series, a de-facto concert season practice, which tremendously rekindled the public’s interest in classical music.

 

1979 was a big year for the Central Philharmonic when it hosted and collaborated with a number of big-name international artists and organizations. In March, the Boston Symphony, led by Seiji Ozawa, toured China and performed three joined concerts with the Central Philharmonic. Their third concert, performing Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, brought the tour to a roaring climax. In April, the Orchestre National de Lyon visited China, led by Serge Baudo, performing mostly French works and Stravinsky’s Firebird, an unprecedented piece since the ban of Western music. In June, American violinist Isaac Stern toured China and collaborated with the Central Philharmonic Orchestra to perform Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3. His entire tour was made into an Oscar-winning documentary, From Mao to Mozart. In the film, Stern commented that, “They had an old-fashioned technical approach towards the manner in which they played their instruments, but with an almost instant understanding and reaction to a given musical stimulus, once they were shown what might be done.” On this occasion, Isaac Stern might not have realized that many members of the orchestra, including Sheng Mingliang, had been trained by Western classical musicians exiled in China 30 years earlier.

 

From October 17 to November 1, 1979, as part of the cultural exchange agreement between China and West Germany, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, led by Herbert von Karajan, toured China. In addition to Berlin Philharmonic’s own programs, a number of Central Philharmonic musicians, including Sheng Mingliang and Sheng Mingyao, were included in an expanded Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra to perform Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. However, unlike the collaboration with the Boston Symphony, where Seiji Ozawa placed Chinese and American musicians side by side, Karajan put the Chinese musicians behind German musicians.

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1979 also saw the Central Philharmonic collaborating with another world-renowned violinist, Sir Yehudi Menuhin, who visited China in December and performed Brahms Violin Concerto. By the end of December 1979, Seiji Ozawa returned to China and conducted the Central Philharmonic to perform Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 – Ode to Joy, a concert that symbolized Western classical music’s full return to China.

 

In the 1980s, the Central Philharmonic continued to build a respectable repertoire of standard Western classical music combined with Chinese compositions. It also invited more international artists to have in-depth collaborations, such as American conductor David Gilbert, who led the orchestra as principal conductor under a one-year contract split into four 3-month periods over two years. The Central Philharmonic’s stature as the national symphony orchestra was firmly established at this point. The launch of its all-Beethoven cycle concerts in the summer of 1981 pushed the zest for classical music to a new high in China. In 1987, the Central Philharmonic Orchestra embarked on a 42-day tour of the United States, presenting 26 concerts in 24 cities over 13 states, a major breakthrough of a Chinese symphony orchestra on the international stage.

 

Immigration to Canada and back to Beijing; death

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From the mid-1980s to mid-1990s, as the whole nation was in a rapid transformation to integrate into the world community, the Central Philharmonic Society was also going through a deep, quite often chaotic reform. Though younger, Western trained conductors were hired to lead the orchestra, talents were leaving for Western countries for better career opportunities. Sheng Mingliang, a founding member having participated in all the major productions and events of the orchestra, was disappointed and weary of the changes being made, many under heavy commercial pressure, seeing them as not to the best interest of the orchestra’s artistic merit. In 1994, Sheng Mingliang retired from his almost 4 decades of service to the orchestra and immigrated to Canada with his wife. In 1996, after a chaotic and controversial reorganization, the Central Philharmonic Society was renamed the China National Symphony Orchestra.

 

In 2002, Sheng Mingliang and his wife resettled in China into their full retirement life. In December 2022, Sheng Mingliang was infected with COVID-19, and succumbed to the disease on January 2, 2023.

 

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* Based on personal memories from my family members and friends who were part of the events described in this article.

** The chronicle of the historical events in this article is referenced from “Song of Phoenix – The Central Philharmonic 1956-1996” (in Chinese), by Hong Kong-based scholar ZHOU Guangzhen, published by SDX Joint Publishing Company, 2013