From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China | |
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Directed by | Murray Lerner |
Produced by | Walter Scheuer |
Starring | Isaac Stern David Golub |
Cinematography | David Bridges Nick Knowland |
Edited by | Tom Haneke |
Production company | Hopewell Foundation |
Distributed by | Harmony Film |
Release date |
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Running time | 84 minutes |
Countries | United States China |
Languages | English Mandarin Wu |
Box office | $1,205,934 [1] |
From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China is a 1979 documentary film about Western culture breaking into China produced and directed by Murray Lerner. It portrays the famous violinist and music teacher Isaac Stern as the first American musician to collaborate with the China Central Symphony Society (now China National Symphony Orchestra).
The film documented Stern's rehearsals and performances of violin concertos by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johannes Brahms. Stern is featured with the famous Chinese conductor Li Delun, who also acted as his guide and translator on his trip. The film also included footage of Stern's visit to the Central Conservatory of Music and the Shanghai Conservatory of Music where he lectured to the Chinese music students on violin playing and the art of musical expression. Most of those musicians were playing mechanically, especially the String section, prior to the human improvements, concerning the qualities of the orchestras. One conductor was imprisoned in a closet for playing works by Ludwig van Beethoven, during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, when Western music was prohibited under the rule of Mao Zedong. Among many others talented players, young cellist Jian Wang (at the time only ten years old) is featured briefly. Jian Wang has gone on to international stardom. [2] Another performer, violinist Vera Tsu Weiling, was featured playing Caprice after a study in the form of a waltz by Saint-Saens, arranged by Ysaÿe.[ citation needed ]
The film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1981. [3] It was also screened out of competition at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival. [4]
The Academy Film Archive preserved Mao to Mozart in 2000. [5]
Isaac Stern was an American violinist.
Itzhak Perlman is an Israeli-American violinist. He has performed worldwide and throughout the United States, in venues that have included a state dinner for Elizabeth II at the White House in 2007, and at the 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama. He has conducted the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Westchester Philharmonic. In 2015, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Perlman has won 16 Grammy Awards, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and four Emmy Awards.
The Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra in E♭ major, K. 364 (320d), was written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Hilary Hahn is an American violinist. A three-time Grammy Award winner, she has played as a soloist with orchestras and conductors, and as a recitalist. Several composers have written works for her, including concerti by Edgar Meyer and Jennifer Higdon, partitas by Antón García Abril, two serenades for violin and orchestra by Einojuhani Rautavaara, and a violin and piano sonata by Lera Auerbach.
Cho-Liang Lin is a Taiwanese-American violinist who is renowned for his appearances as a soloist with major orchestras. Musical America named him its "Instrumentalist of the Year" in 2000. He founded the Taipei International Music Festival in 1997, the largest classical music festival in the history of Taiwan, performing to an indoor audience of over 53,000 and the Taipei Music Academy & Festival in 2019, a summer music festival.
The Shanghai Quartet is a string quartet that formed in 1983. The quartet is made up of: first violinist Weigang Li, second violinist Angelo Xiang Yu, violist Honggang Li, and cellist Nicholas Tzavaras. On November 20, 2020 the ensemble announced the newest member, Angelo Xiang Yu. The Shanghai Quartet accepted the resignation of former violist Yi-Wen Jiang on March 17, 2020. The group's tours have included North America, South America, Japan, China, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. Among their performances, the Shanghai Quartet has developed a long list of performance collaborators including Yo-Yo Ma, David Soyer, Eugenia Zukerman, Sharon Isbin, Ruth Laredo, Arnold Steinhardt, and Chanticleer.
John Dalley is an American violinist. He was raised in a musical family. His father was an orchestra conductor, violinist, composer, instrumental teacher, and music educator. His mother, from Bloomington, Illinois, was a cellist, music teacher, and music publisher.
Jian Wang is a Chinese cellist. A soloist, chamber musician, recording artist and teacher, he was the first Chinese musician to ever sign an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon.
Barnabás Kelemen is a Hungarian violinist, chamber musician, and professor. He is the founder and artistic director of the Festival Academy Budapest and he co-established the Kelemen Quartet. His work has been recognized with the highest professional and state honors: he has been awarded Liszt, Bartók-Pásztory and Kossuth Prizes, Prima and the London-based Gramophone Awards, and is the holder of the Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary.
David Golub was an American pianist and conductor.
Boris Davidovich Belkin is a Soviet-born violin virtuoso.
Li Delun was a Chinese conductor who devoted his life to the promotion of classical music in China. Hailed as the father of China's classical music, the Li Delun National Conducting Competition was named after him in honour of his contribution to the development of classical music in China.
Oscar Ravina, born in Warsaw, Poland, was a violinist, violin teacher and concertmaster based in New York, who has had a prolific career as a performer as well as being a current professor emeritus at Montclair State University, where a talent grant in his name is regularly given to outstanding full-time freshmen studying string instruments.
Wang Xilin is a Chinese composer.
Nancy Zhou is a Chinese-American classical violinist. She has performed as a soloist in recital and with orchestras throughout the world. Zhou has been a prizewinner in several major competitions, including first prizes in the 2018 Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition and the 2018 International Music Competition Harbin.
Tan Shuzhen was a Chinese violinist, teacher and violin maker. In 1927, he became the first Chinese musician to join the Shanghai Municipal Public Band, now the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, led by Italian conductor Mario Paci. "Nobody had ever seen a Chinese in the orchestra," Tan has been quoted as saying. "So many people came to see me."
Dennis Kim is a Canadian violinist born in Seoul, South Korea. He currently serves as the Concertmaster of the Pacific Symphony in Orange County.
"While having a formidable technique, she is not a virtuoso phenomenon, but something different that has to do intimately with music."
The Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition (SISIVC) is a biennial violin competition in commemoration of violinist Isaac Stern, which takes place in Shanghai, China. The inaugural competition took place August–September 2016 offering $100,000 as the first place prize, the largest single cash prize ever in an international violin competition.
Vera Tsu Weiling is a professional violinist and Professor and Master tutor of the Central Conservatory in Beijing and Shanghai Conservatory. She is featured in the Academy Award winning documentary From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China, directed by Murray Lerner. Tsu Weiling serves as co-chairman of the Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition and vice-president of the China Violin Society.