Chinese pianist Fu Cong has died in London at the age of 86.
Chinese pianist Fu Cong has died in London at the age of 86, according to the Chopin Society’s website.
Fu Cong, a Chinese pianist living in Britain, has been hospitalized for two weeks after contracting Wuhan pneumonia, according to the Central News Agency. Poland’s Fryderyk Chopin Institute today announced the death of Fu Cong with a black-and-white photo of him smiling and with sharp eyes.
Fu Cong was born in Shanghai in 1934. His father was fu Lei, a famous translator. Fu Lei’s Letters is a collection of letters written by Fu Lei to Fu Cong. The letters began in 1954 when Fu cong left home to study in Poland, and ended in 1966 when Fu and his wife were persecuted and committed suicide during the Cultural Revolution.
In 1955, Fu Cong won the 3rd place in the 5th Chopin International Piano Competition. He also won the “Mazurka” Special Award for Best Performance, becoming the first Chinese musician to win in an international piano competition.
“Taste is in music based on culture”
Fu Cong once said that he was deeply influenced by his father, Fu Lei. “My father encouraged me to be a cultured and cultivated person. Only with cultural accomplishment can I have a certain taste in playing the piano.” “Be a man first, then an artist, then a pianist”.
In 1957, Fu’s father, Fu Lei, was criticized and labeled a “rightist” during the Communist Party’s “anti-rightist” campaign. Fu Cong, who is far away in Poland, also became the target of “criticism” among overseas students for being affected. With the help of a former British music teacher, Fu secretly bought a plane ticket from Warsaw to London and managed to flee to Britain in December 1958.
He was naturalised in Britain in 1965, a move that provoked an outcry from the Chinese Communist Party, which branded him a “defector”. Fu Cong’s brother Fu Min said after his father was exonerated that if his brother (Fu Cong) returned home, it would only let Fu Lei and his wife die earlier.
“I saw my father suffer,” Fu says. “That’s why I was precocious. I have long seen the two poles of the human soul, how many small and sacred, terrible and beautiful things there are in the human soul! I saw the world of Shakespeare at home, and I saw the tragedies of Hamlet and Lear — I give you an example, not that it happened in my house, but the great waves with which I grew up. These experiences are not for everyone, and they have given me more faith in life.”
Recalling this incident in 1980, Fu Cong said that he was “forced to liangshan mountain” and that he was unwilling to return to China to suffer the tragedy of “the father exposing his son and the son exposing his father”. He ran away after a few years only to learn that his parents committed suicide, the heart pain can be imagined.
The piano is not a skill but an art
Regarded as one of the greatest piano masters of our time, Argentine piano virtuoso Marsha Aglizzi and Fu Cong became old friends and had a profound friendship. (SOEREN STACHE/DPA/AFP via Getty Images)
Fu was also a member of the jury of the 1985 and 2010 Chopin International Piano Competitions in Poland. In his later years, he made unremitting efforts on the road of music. Every day, he slept early and got up at 7 o ‘clock and practiced the piano at 9:30. However, he suffered from tendonitis and kept warm with black gloves when practicing and playing the piano. He said his fingers were actually covered with plasters and that he had to keep as warm as possible so that his blood could flow.
Technique is important, Fu says. “I spent so much time practicing because my hands were hurt and my fingers were not in good condition.” But just the fingers running so fast over the keys, it doesn’t make sense. “Pianos also value tone control, gradation, which is not a technique, but an art.”
Fu cong music also is the inspiration behind other pianists, the 7th Chopin international piano competition first prize winner, is regarded as one of the greatest contemporary master of Argentine piano masters Martha agger (Martha Argerich), her the Chopin international piano competition in 1965 won best “progenitor card” special award, when she was asked about how to play the music so difficult to master the details, agger her answer: “in Chinese pianist fu cong records.” Martha Aglish, born in 1941, later became an unforgettable friend with Fu Cong and their friendship was profound.
Fu has visited Taiwan many times in the past, and there were many good clips at the press conference, but he always insisted on not playing a short piece live, which embarrassed his old friend Xu Boyun. “I’m not in this business for entertainment,” he insists. “If I’m going to play it, I’m going to play the whole piece.”
Since the outbreak of pneumonia in Wuhan, many musicians have been affected by the virus, including Domingo, one of the world’s three tenors, diagnosed on March 22; On March 27, anne-Sophie Mutter, a well-known German violinist, announced on social media that she had tested positive for the virus. Among those who did not survive the virus was Jean Loeb, an 80-year-old French violinist, who died on March 18; Ellis Marsalis Jr., legendary American musician and patriarch of jazz’s first family, died on April 1.
Emotional frustrations
Fu cong has been married three times. At the age of 21, Fu married Zamira, the eldest daughter of renowned violinist Yehudi Menuhin, to become his first wife. They had a son and were married for nine years. At the age of 39, Fu married Hyon Hye-jin, the daughter of the South Korean ambassador to Morocco, but the marriage ended in divorce.
In 1974, at the age of 40, Fu Cong got acquainted with zhuo Yilong, a pianist from Gulangyu island in Xiamen. The two, who were six years apart, had a very happy talk with each other. Fu’s relationship became stable and they soon got married for the third time.
According to the report, Zhuo Yilong, who was married for more than 40 years, had been infected almost simultaneously with her husband. But the 80-year-old woman recovered after being hospitalized for three days, only to be denied the fate of Fu Cong, making the couple wedded to each other. The fate of Fu Cong’s parents, written full of the communist Party of China under the tyranny of blood and tears, as a pianist Fu Cong life wonderful legend, but also because of Wuhan pneumonia and draw a conclusion from now on, so sad.
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