China's First Recital and Recording Pianist Ding Shande: A Critical Examination of His Performing Career and Performance Style

Abstract

Musical biography, particularly that which focuses on non-Western performers, has long been marginalized in musicology. This article critically examines the performing career and performance style of China's first recital and recording pianist, Ding Shande, by scrutinizing written documents and analysing recordings. It was found that Ding's performing career was short-lived, peaking in 1935 and ending in the 1950s, and that he tended to play with fast and even tempo, emphasize metrical organizations, and highlight structural divisions through long-range dynamic variation. These findings shed light on how the changing concept of semi-colonialism influenced the career trajectories and performance styles of the earliest Chinese pianists, and hence offer insights into early history of piano performance in China. This article shows that performers’ performances are just as important in biographical writings as is the story of their lives, and that interweaving the two helps develop a more thorough and comprehensive understanding of a performer's biography.

Introduction

The writing of biographies of musicians has been a standard dimension of musical study since its inception.¹ However, accused of addressing the popular market, musical biography has long been a peripheral genre of musicology.² Recent research identifies it as an important area that remains to be explored. Christopher Wiley and Paul Watt suggest that musical biography is ‘a significant gap in existing scholarly discourse … [and] can and should be front and center of the musicological arena’.³ Having reviewed a substantial body of literature, they conclude that ‘there is still much more work to be undertaken in the area, especially in relation to the complexity – and also the nuances – of the methods utilized in musical biography’.⁴ Among the variety of approaches to musical biography, those that interweave the life and performance of individual performers, as opposed to composers, are particularly neglected and need to be more firmly established in the discipline.⁵ With the growing prominence of performance studies in musicology in America and European countries, there has been an increase in biographical output concerning performers. The latest publications in this area include the biographies of Marie Lloyd,⁶ Franz Tausch,⁷ Heinrich Neuhaus,⁸ and Jascha Heifetz.⁹ Yet, studies in English tend to confine their subjects almost exclusively to Western instrumentalists and vocalists. Biographical writings of non-Western performers, particularly with the approach that interweaves the life and performance of a performer, are extremely scarce, despite the increasing eminence and influence of these musicians.

In recent years, Asian musicians – particularly pianists from China – have been gaining enormous attention on the international classical music scene. As a result, the Chinese piano ‘school’ has been a subject of scrutiny in Western musicology. Increasing scholarly work has been done on the identity,¹⁰ performance practice,¹¹ and reception¹² of some of the rising stars of our times. In contrast, research from historical and biographical perspectives is largely lacking. The first generation of Chinese pianists were trained mainly by European musicians in Shanghai in the 1930s, particularly by the Russian émigré Boris Zakharov (1887–1943).¹³ Some of these pianists went on to pursue a performance career that exerted immense influence on Chinese pianists of subsequent generations, whereas some others experienced severe and permanent setbacks in their careers due to social and political turmoil.¹⁴ Yet, existing publications about these musicians are largely concerned with the historical¹⁵ and sociocultural¹⁶ contexts in which they undertook their performance activities. Performers themselves are merely case studies, if not footnotes, of larger sociohistorical inquiries and rarely take centre stage. The absence of biographical studies of these pianists results in a lack of a full and thorough understanding of their career trajectories and the early history of Chinese pianism. The neglect of performance analysis in biographical studies also severely limits our knowledge of one of the most important aspects of these performers: performance style.

Addressing the preceding research gaps, this article critically examines the performing career and performance style of one of China's earliest pianists, a key figure in the emergence of the piano in China: Ding Shande (1911–95).¹⁷ It combines biographical investigation based on written documents and empirical analysis of his recordings. Ding had several important roles throughout his long musical career and it is his role as pianist with which this article is concerned. This is by no means to imply that Ding failed as a composer, a music educator, or a music administrator, the prominent roles he played at later stages of his life. The reason for focusing solely on his performance is because he is the first Chinese pianist to hold recitals and make recordings¹⁸ and therefore should be regarded as one of the founders and pioneers of Chinese pianism. Ironically, his role as a pianist, including both his career trajectory and his performance style, is relatively unexplored. Hence, a study concentrating on his identity as a pianist and his piano performances can deepen our understanding of his musical persona and shed new light on the early history of piano performance in China.

This article contributes to the biographical construction of Ding by examining his performing career and performance style. It contextualizes the stylistic features found in his performances within larger biographical circumstances and sociocultural framework of twentieth-century China, particularly in the semi-colonial context of interwar Shanghai, where Ding received his music education and embarked on his performing career. To achieve this aim, it combines the examination of written documents on the life of Ding (mostly in Chinese),¹⁹ information collected from interviews, and analysis of recordings. It discusses how the rapidly changing social conditions and political landscape of twentieth-century China made, shaped, and ended the career of a talented pianist whose performance style was influenced by both his Russian teacher and the unique sociocultural conditions of his time. It also explains why Ding is remembered in China more as a composer than as a pianist and why his piano achievements go almost completely unnoticed outside his country.

This article is divided into three main parts. The first part outlines Ding's performing career, activities, and repertoire. Written documents and interviews show that Ding's performing career was extremely short-lived, peaking immediately after he graduated from the National Conservatory of Music (the predecessor of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music) in 1935 and ending in the 1950s when he turned his attention to composition. This part follows a chronological order. It first introduces his conservatory years when he was a music student in Shanghai, learning piano under the supervision of a renowned Russian pianist. It then describes his prime years as a pianist, during which he proactively delivered concerts around the country. Lastly, it outlines his transition period that saw him gradually shift his repertoire from canonical classical pieces to Chinese compositions and his performance activities from solo live performances to accompaniments and recordings. In this period, he also gradually, and perhaps reluctantly, transformed from a pianist into a composer and music administrator, abandoning his performing career totally.

The second part examines Ding's performance style by studying his recordings of four solo piano pieces. It empirically analyses the timing and dynamic information in these rather neglected early recordings with a view to exploring the stylistic features in his playing. Three main stylistic tendencies emerge from the results: playing with a fast and even tempo, emphasizing metrical organizations of the music, and articulating large-scale structures through dynamic variation. On the one hand, these features show some signs of Russian influence, likely exerted by his only piano teacher, Zakharov. On the other hand, they seem to differ greatly from the stylistic convention of Western pianists of Ding's time.

The third part combines the findings of the first two parts by critically discussing how Ding's life and China's sociocultural contexts resulted in the wax and wane of Ding's performing career and possibly influenced his performance style. It shows that the intersection of colonialism, cosmopolitanism, and nationalism in interwar Shanghai, where Ding received his music education and embarked on his pianist career, may have led to his unique career trajectory and idiosyncratic stylistic features. It may be the changing concept of semi-colonialism that impacted on the career development of the first-generation Chinese pianists and their styles of piano performance.

Performing career

The conservatory years (1928–1935)

Ding Shande was born in what is now a suburb of Shanghai in 1911. The year saw the Wuchang uprising that led to the dissolution of the Qing dynasty and the conclusion of thousands of years of imperial rule in China. During its late reign, the Qing government suffered a number of ignoble defeats in the wars against Western powers and was forced to cede territories. Shanghai became one of the five treaty ports for international trade and global businesses.²⁰ To facilitate their trading activities, many of the foreign governments established extraterritorial concessions in the city (i.e., areas exempt from the jurisdiction of Chinese law) that allowed their nationals to live and work safely and freely. The semi-colonial status of Shanghai in the early twentieth century made it one of the most internationalized cities in Asia, with foreigners from more than twenty European nations and America as well as a sizable community of other Asian citizens.²¹ Among them were over 25,000 Russian émigrés who had fled the newly established Soviet Union after years of social and political unrest.²² The distinguished Russian pianist Zakharov – a pupil of the legendary Anna Yesipova at the St Petersburg Conservatory – was one of them. The first music conservatory of China, the National Conservatory of Music (hereafter ‘the Conservatory’), was established in Shanghai in 1927. Zakharov, who arrived in Shanghai in 1928, was immediately identified as an ideal candidate to be a faculty member and started teaching there the following year.

Although Ding had learnt a few Chinese musical instruments – mostly informally – in his childhood, when he entered the Conservatory in 1928, he had almost no piano training. In 1929, at the age of 18, he formally started his piano lessons and became one of Zakharov's first pupils in China.²³ According to Ding himself, Zakharov revolutionized the approach to piano pedagogy in China by firmly incorporating Russian teaching methods and a great deal of Western repertoire into the curriculum.²⁴ Zakharov taught Ding for seven years, from 1929 to 1935. Exactly what pieces he assigned to Ding during the first year of study remain unknown. However, the repertoire Ding played in his school exams and graduation recital (Table 1) clearly suggests that he was trained rigorously and systematically under Zakharov's supervision. In his graduation recital in 1935, he played a set of canonical and technically challenging classical pieces that made up a full-scale piano recital that matched the Western standards of the time. It is a milestone in the history of piano performance in China as it was the first-ever piano recital by a Chinese pianist.²⁵ That Chinese musicians started to perform classical music and Western instruments drew a great deal of attention from not only local newspapers but also international media.²⁶ A Russian newspaper reporting this recital described Ding's playing as ‘technically at ease’.²⁷ It shows that his musical talent and ability were praised by both the local and the international music circles.

Table 1 Ding's repertoire in school performances (1931–5)

It can be seen in Table 1 that Ding only played canonical classical pieces during his conservatory years (except one Chinese piece in his graduation recital). The repertoire he played increased in both difficulty and complexity, from short and relatively easy etudes of Carl Czerny and inventions of J. S. Bach – standard pieces for piano beginners – to large-scale and technically demanding works such as Franz Liszt's Hungarian rhapsodies and Ludwig van Beethoven's sonatas. Apart from the previously mentioned school exams and graduation recital, Ding performed live on nineteen other occasions during his conservatory years. Since most of these events were students’ concerts at the Conservatory that involved many student performers in one event, Ding played only one or two pieces on most of these occasions. Again, he only played canonical classical pieces in these concerts (except for six held outside the Conservatory in 1934 in which he accompanied local singers performing Chinese songs). In the year before he finished his study, Ding started to play in studios. He recorded four pieces for EMI, all playing accompaniment for locally renowned singers performing songs by Chinese composers.

Figure 1 summarizes the type and number of performance events Ding participated in each year of his performing career. It shows that 1934, the year before his graduation from the Conservatory, was Ding's busiest year as a pianist. The number of performances he gave in this year far exceeds that in any of the other years of his career. It paved the way for two recital series that he held after his graduation.

Figure 1 (Colour online) Type and number of performance events in each year of Ding's performing career.

The prime years (1935–1937)

After graduating from the Conservatory, Ding immediately embarked on his concert pianist career. In 1935, he held a series of three recitals in Tianjin and Peking (now known as Beijing), playing the same programme as in his graduation recital (Table 1). He also made his first solo piano recording (EMI A2435-2436), in which he played two pieces by the contemporary Chinese composer He Luting (1903–99). Taking up a full-time teaching position at the Hebei Women's Normal College in Tianjin in the same year, Ding did not give up on performing. Two years later, he held another series of recitals in the same pair of cities, featuring a largely different yet equally challenging programme (Table 2). The six historic recitals as well as the recording he made are the first played by a Chinese pianist.

Table 2 Information on Ding's six piano recitals

Ding's recitals are on a par with what is now a typical piano recital in terms of both the length of the concert and the depth of the programme: both series included a complete Beethoven sonata and one of Liszt's Hungarian rhapsodies, together with a number of short, virtuosic pieces. They not only proved the rigor of training that Ding received from Zakharov in his conservatory years – the only seven years in which he received formal piano training – but also showed Ding's exceptional talent in piano playing as well as his potential to develop a successful performing career.

The year 1935 saw the greatest variety of Ding's performance activities as he staged solo recitals and several charity concerts, as well as accompanying local singers in both live and recorded settings. In this year, at the age of 23, he made China's first piano recording and gave its first piano recital. It seems, however, that this year was already the high point of his post-student performing career. After 1935, both the frequency and the variety of his performances dropped sharply, as shown in Figure 1.

In 1936, Ding made only one public performance, playing accompaniment for a local singer in Tianjin, another semi-colonial city in which he worked and resided briefly. In 1937, the two recitals were the only public performances that he gave. These are also the last recitals of his entire career as a pianist. In the following two years, he did not play in public at all. Based on these facts, 1935–7 can be regarded as the prime years of Ding's performing career as over these three years he performed six full-scale recitals and made a recording, establishing himself as the pioneering figure in China's history of piano performance. Although these activities are not comparable to a travelling virtuoso in the modern sense, who may well give over 100 concerts across five continents within a year, Ding's achievement, judged within the context of 1930s China, was unprecedented.

The period in which Ding actively performed as a concert pianist – his prime years – was short and came early. It happened immediately after his graduation from the Conservatory and lasted for merely two years. It appears that the rigorous training he received during his conservatory years paved the way for his career as a concert pianist, a career that failed to sustain itself. His short-lived prime years can be attributed to a variety of reasons. The main reason seems to be financial. After graduating from the Conservatory, Ding was bestowed with a professorship at the Hebei Women's Normal College. The full-time job was the main source, if not the only source, of his income. Neither performing in concerts nor making recordings offered him sufficient income to sustain his life, largely due to the severe marginalization of classical music in China.²⁸ In other words, for Ding, performance was not a job by which he earned a living but a lofty hobby that he could only pursue after work. From an interview he gave to one of his students many years later, one can sense Ding's frustration at not having been able to give more concerts when he was young. He claimed that:

After I had given the second series of recitals, I found it problematic. I worked very hard on the recital pieces. But in the end, I could only perform them on two occasions. Then it was all done. This was a huge pity. There was simply no market for performance in China: no agents, no organizers. I felt that performance would be an impasse … Since concerts, particularly recitals, were extremely rare in China, I could only give two series of recitals. Then I went to Shanghai, where I participated in concerts occasionally. I played such pieces as Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 12 as part of a concert. But recitals were just impossible.²⁹

This statement offers an insight into how difficult Ding found being a concert pianist in 1930s China. It may partly be this frustration that led to Ding's total abandonment of his performing career a few years later. This may also explain why there was almost no such profession as concert pianists in China until the economic reform in the 1980s that saw China open to the world and produced the most rapidly growing economy on Earth.³⁰

The transition period (1937–1956)

Three months after Ding gave his second series of recitals, the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, a battle that is generally regarded as the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War, occurred in Peking. The Hebei Women's Normal College was bombed.³¹ Ding lost his job and returned to Shanghai in October 1937. To earn a living, he co-established a private music school in which he worked as both the principal and a piano teacher. As the only piano teacher in the school, Ding was responsible for coaching all the piano students. At the same time, he took up a part-time teaching position in his alma mater for some extra income. Fully occupied with teaching and administrative duties, Ding made no public performances at all in 1938 and 1939.

Apart from financial reasons, Ding's withdrawal from the public stage was probably also due to the increasing nationalist sentiment caused by the Second Sino-Japanese War. Western art music became eclipsed by the general popularity of anti-Japanese nationalist songs.³² Piano recitals were not possible under these circumstances. As the principal of the school that he co-established, he performed in three annual school concerts (Figure 1). The three one-piece performances were the only public appearances he made in the two years. He stopped performing again in the following four years (1942–5) (Figure 1). Suddenly his performing career dropped to a historical low.

In the early 1940s, he started to turn his attention to composition.³³ In an effort to enhance his compositional techniques, he studied with an exiled German-Jewish composer, Wolfgang Fraenkel, in Shanghai in 1941.³⁴ By the time he finished his study with Fraenkel in 1947, he had composed two piano pieces, which gained widespread acclaim in China. It further consolidated his determination to compose. With a desire to strengthen his compositional ability, he decided to pursue further studies in Europe. In 1947, he arrived in France and entered the Paris Conservatoire.

During his time in Paris, his attention was almost solely on composition.³⁵ It was from this time that he confined his public performance repertoire to just his own compositions. As a pianist, Ding gave a few performances in Paris in which he played one of his own compositions each time (Figure 1). He also made a recording in which he played two of his own works. After he returned to China, he made four more recordings, two in 1953 and another two in 1956, in which he played only his own pieces. His training at the Paris Conservatoire appears to have been a crucial turning point for his musical career. On the one hand, he gradually evolved away from being a ‘colonial’ pianist who almost exclusively played canonical classical pieces in front of international audiences; on the other hand, he shifted his focus from piano to composition, raising his compositional output and giving up on piano performance.

Ding's nationalist aspirations – strengthening China's soft power through music – started to be realized after he returned to Shanghai in October 1949, the month that saw the establishment of Communist China. Having composed a few patriotic works in France that caught the attention of Chinese music circles, he was immediately appointed as a professor of composition at the Conservatory and was promoted to head of the Composition Department three years later. His music administrative career developed further in 1956 when he became vice president of the Conservatory.³⁶ It was also in this year that he made his final recording and the penultimate public performance of his career, in which he played a piano suite composed by himself. After 1956, he made only one public performance: playing a short piece of his own in a ceremonial concert in 1983, an event to celebrate his musical achievements. Therefore, 1956 should be regarded as the end of his piano performance career.

Meanwhile, Ding's compositional career continued to thrive. In 1958, Mao Zedong, the founding president of the People's Republic of China, launched the Great Leap Forward Movement, an economic campaign that aimed to eliminate poverty and decolonize China by significantly increasing industrial and agricultural productions.³⁷ The campaign soon expanded into arts industries. The Chinese Communist Party called upon musicians to sharply increase the output of patriotic and locally popular music to boost the morale of workers and farmers and inspire them to greater production achievements.³⁸ Ding, the nationalist composer, was given an important role in this ambitious plan. It shows how highly he was regarded by the Party leaders, a status that he had not enjoyed as a pianist.

The Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976 plunged his musical career into yet another historical low. All his musical activities were brought to a halt. After Mao's death in 1976, Deng Xiaoping, the successor to Mao, made a dramatic policy U-turn and repudiated the political campaign of his predecessor.³⁹ He reformed the political and economic systems, encouraging exchange with the rest of the world on almost all fronts. Many younger Chinese pianists benefited from the increasingly vibrant market and revitalized their performing careers in the 1980s.⁴⁰ But it was probably too late for Ding, in his seventies, to do the same. By this time, his piano recitals and recordings had already become distant memories while his identity as a composer was further consolidated.

Performance style

There are a few possible approaches in which performance style can be investigated. First, it can be achieved by examining reviews written by music critics for mass media, such as newspapers or magazines. This approach is hardly feasible in the case of Ding as the practice of music reviewing was not yet established in China when Ding was a concert pianist. Second, it can also be done by an ethnographic approach, interviewing the teachers, pupils, and contemporaries of Ding. However, since Ding only performed in his early years – mostly in the 1920s and 1930s – many of those who heard him play either have passed away or find it difficult to recall the details of Ding's playing. The third possible approach involves empirical analysis of the recordings Ding made. In the past two decades, this method has been widely used for studying performance features in early recordings and of early twentieth-century performers and has become one of the best-established methods for studying performance style. Therefore, of the three preceding approaches, the last one seems to be most feasible and capable of yielding reliable results in Ding's case. Based on these considerations, the performance style of Ding was mainly investigated by a computer-assisted method that involves analysis of the timing and dynamic information in Ding's recordings.⁴¹

As discussed in the preceding part, Ding was hardly able to sustain a concert pianist career. He was not an active recording pianist either. Throughout his career, he recorded six different solo piano pieces in total: two in 1935, two in 1947 (one of them had been recorded in 1935), two in 1954, and two in 1956 (one of them had been recorded in 1947). The information on his recordings of the six pieces is summarized in Table 3.⁴²

Table 3 Information on Ding's recordings of solo piano pieces

^a Recording selected for analysis

‘Spring Travel’ Suite is not included in this study because available recordings of the piece are scarce, which hinders cross-performer comparison. Conversely, in Children's Suite, only ‘Outing’ is selected for analysis because of the abundance of recorded versions, which helps reveal the distinctive features in Ding's playing through comparison. Based on these considerations, five recordings of four pieces have been selected for analysis, as shown in Table 3 (selected recordings in bold). The four pieces, two composed by Ding himself and two by another Chinese composer, He Luting, include different tempi and a broad range of dynamic markings. The five recordings span over twenty years, from Ding's earliest recording to one of his last. It is, therefore, believed that these recordings can cogently represent Ding's performance style. Timing and dynamic information in these recordings was extracted by Sonic Visualiser. After extracting timing and dynamic data from all the selected recordings⁴³ and mapping them to the score-based structures, three main stylistic tendencies in Ding's recordings are found:

1. 1. Playing with a fast and even tempo.

2. 2. Emphasizing metrical organizations.

3. 3. Articulating large-scale structures through dynamic variation.

Playing with a fast and even tempo

The results of empirical analysis show that Ding tends to play with a fast and even basic tempo. This tendency can be clearly, yet intriguingly, shown by an unusual feature in Ding's two recordings of the same piece. Ding recorded Buffalo Boy's Little Flute twice, the first time in 1935 and the second in 1947 (Table 4). Ding made the earlier recording, the premier recording of the piece, upon the invitation from and under the guidance of the composer, He Luting. Therefore, it can be assumed that the tempo he used in this recording reflected the preference of the composer more than that of Ding himself. In this recording, Ding's tempi in the two outer sections⁴⁴ are the second slowest among all the sixteen recorded versions. Interestingly, in the second recording that he made twelve years later in which he realized his own stylistic conviction without the direct influence of the composer, his tempi of the two outer sections are considerably faster, making them the joint second fastest among the sixteen versions. In the second recording, the tempo of the faster middle section is only slightly faster than that in the first, creating an overall tempo that is more even across the three sections. This discrepancy between Ding's two recorded versions can possibly be explained by his preference to play with a fast tempo, particularly in slower passages, and a more even overall tempo across sections.

Table 4 Sixteen recordings of He Luting's Buffalo Boy's Little Flute

^a Tempo is measured by the median value of all beat lengths (four beats per bar) within a section, in the unit of beats per minute (bpm). The three numbers in the tempo column represent the values of the three sections: A (bars 1–25), B (bars 26–51), A (bars 52–76).

Ding's tendency to play with a fast and even tempo can also be noted in his recordings of the other three pieces. Of the six recordings of He Luting's Lullaby (Table 5), Ding's tempi of the two A sections are the joint fastest. His tempo in the middle section is only slightly faster than the two outer ones, making the overall tempo more even when comparing with some other pianists – such as Liao Chong and Roger Lord – who play the middle section much slower than the outer ones and hence create greater sense of sectionalization.

Table 5 Six recordings of He Luting's Lullaby

^a Tempo is measured by the median value of all beat lengths (two beats per bar) within a section, in the unit of beats per minute (bpm). The four numbers in the tempo column represent the values of the four sections: A (bars 1–27), B (bars 28–48), A (bars 49–75), Coda (bars 76–84).

In Ding's recordings of the two pieces composed by himself (Tables 6 and 7), Ding's tendencies to play with a fast and even tempo can also be found to a greater or lesser extent. In ‘Outing’ (Table 6), while the pianists in the two most recent recordings – the two made in 2017 – highlight the formal structure by employing highly similar basic tempi in the two outer sections and a noticeably different tempo in the middle one, Ding treats the piece more as a through-composed work by playing with a relatively even tempo throughout. His tempo difference across the three sections is the smallest among all eight recordings of the piece, which clearly demonstrates his tendency to employ an even tempo across a piece.

Table 6 Eight recordings of Ding Shande's ‘Outing’

^a Tempo is measured by the median value of all beat lengths (six beats per bar) within a section, in the unit of beats per minute (bpm). The three numbers in the tempo column represent the values of the three sections: A (bars 1–15), B (bars 16–40), A (bars 41–55).

Table 7 Eight recordings of Ding Shande's Xinjiang Dance No. 1

^a Tempo is measured by the median value of all beat lengths (four beats per bar) within a section, in the unit of beats per minute (bpm). The three numbers in the tempo column represent the values of the three sections: A (bars 1–38), B (bars 39–56), A (bars 57–99).

In his performance of Xinjiang Dance No. 1, although his tempi of the two outer sections are similar to that in most other recordings, he plays the slower middle section with a relatively faster tempo, the third fastest among the eight recordings. This further confirms his tendency to play slow passages with a relatively faster tempo. In the return of the main theme, while half of the pianists play with a tempo that is considerably slower than that in its first appearance (5 or more bpm difference), Ding is among the other half who choose a similar tempo (within 5 bpm difference). The even tempo, one of Ding's typical features, creates a strong sense of structural coherence.

Emphasizing metrical organizations

Another notable tendency found in Ding's recordings is his emphasis on metrical organizations through dynamic variation on the beat level. All four pieces are with regular rhythms and balanced phrases that end with cadences. Three of them are in duple metres: Buffalo Boy's Little Flute ⁴⁵ and Lullaby in 2/4, ‘Outing’ in 6/8. Xinjiang Dance No. 1, which begins in 4/4, is excluded from this analysis because of the constantly changing metres and free tempo in the middle section. While Lullaby is in a moderate tempo, the other two pieces are lively and have a strong rhythmic sense.

Sonic Visualiser automatically generated the dynamic level of each beat in a recording. These data were then compared across recordings of the same piece. The results show that Ding tends to stress the strong beats more often than other pianists do. In other words, he shows a stronger tendency to emphasize the metrical organizations notated in the score, and hence a greater extent of rhythmic regularity. Figures 2 to 4 show the number of bars in which strong beats are played louder than weak beats, an intra-bar beat dynamic pattern that conforms to the metre of the score.

Figure 2 (Colour online) Number of bars with metrical dynamic pattern in Buffalo Boy's Little Flute (B section).

It can be seen in Figure 2 that Ding's 1935 recording has twenty (out of a total twenty-five) bars in which the beat-level dynamic variation conforms to the metrical organization of the score, what I call a metrical dynamic pattern. It accounts for 80 per cent of the total bars. In his 1947 recording, there are seventeen bars (68 per cent of the total bars) showing the metrical dynamic pattern. Among the sixteen selected recordings, the numbers of bars with a metrical dynamic pattern in Ding's two recordings are the second and third highest, respectively. The results show that Ding tends to emphasize metrical organizations of the piece by constantly playing the strong beats louder than the weak beats. This is a tendency that can also be found in his recordings of the Lullaby (Figure 3) and ‘Outing’ (Figure 4), in which the numbers of bars with metrical dynamic patterns are ranked, respectively, second and first among all selected recordings. In Ding's recordings of all three pieces, the number of bars with metrical dynamic patterns exceeds 50 per cent of the total number of bars. His percentages are ranked top three of all recordings in each piece.

Figure 3 (Colour online) Number of bars with metrical dynamic pattern in Lullaby.

Figure 4 (Colour online) Number of bars with metrical dynamic pattern in ‘Outing’.

Articulating large-scale structures through dynamic variation

In terms of large-scale structures, all four selected pieces are in a ternary (ABA) form, with a prominent cadence at the end of each section. Despite employing a rather even tempo across sections, Ding tends to articulate the formal structures of the pieces by playing with pronounced dynamic variation at the sectional and sub-sectional boundaries, creating a strong sense of sectional division while maintaining an even pace. Figures 5 to 8 show the dynamic profiles of Ding's recordings of each piece, in which his tendency to employ pronounced diminuendo at the ends of almost all main sections (marked by boxes) and most sub-sections (boundaries circled) can be clearly seen. As shown in these figures, almost all the most prominent dynamic changes coincide with sectional and sub-sectional boundaries (except in Xinjiang Dance which has a free-tempo middle section). In contrast, dynamic changes for expressive purposes – as opposed to those with structural significance – are kept to a relatively lesser extent.

Figure 5 (Colour online) Ding's dynamic profile of Buffalo Boy's Little Flute.

Figure 6 (Colour online) Ding's dynamic profile of Lullaby.

Figure 7 (Colour online) Ding's dynamic profile of ‘Outing’.

Figure 8 (Colour online) Ding's dynamic profile of Xinjiang Dance No. 1.

Ding's tendency to articulate sectional and sub-sectional boundaries with pronounced dynamic variation is consistent not only across the selected pieces but also throughout each piece itself. It can be seen in all four dynamic profiles that the dynamic patterns of the two A sections are strikingly similar. This shows that Ding's pronounced dynamic variations at (sub-)sectional boundaries are by no means coincidence but a feature that is consistently found in and across all his recordings.

This tendency can be further confirmed by the dynamic markings he put down in the scores of the two pieces composed by Ding himself (Figures 7 and 8). In ‘Outing’, he notates two contrasting sets of dynamics for the A and B sections. The outer ones are dominated by p and mp, but, in contrast, the middle one by f. In his recording of this piece, he strictly follows these markings by playing the B section generally louder than the two A sections. This creates a strong sense of sectional distinction through the difference in general dynamic levels.

In Ding's performance of Xinjiang Dance No. 1, the tendency of long-range dynamic variation to build up a climax in the coda is obvious. With an abundance of dynamic signs, ranging from pp to ff, he faithfully follows the markings and creates two long and prominent crescendos that stretch across the entirety of the A sections (Figure 8). Similarly, in the B section, all the dynamic markings are faithfully played, creating a long-range diminuendo across the section. These long-range dynamic variations span across the entire sections, highlighting the sectionalization of the piece. They confirm Ding's tendency to shape large-scale structure through dynamic variation while maintaining an even pace throughout.

Discussion

The first part of this article described the trajectory of Ding's performing career, including his performance activities, repertoire, and the transition from a pianist to a composer. The second part analysed his recordings and examined his performance style. Indeed, Ding's performing career and performance style were closely related to and considerably influenced by the sociocultural context of his time. Looking at these relations and influences, I suggest that China's rapidly changing social conditions and political landscape between the 1920s and 1950s, particularly the volatility of the concept of semi-colonialism, created the unique environment that made him China's first recital and recording pianist, shaped his performance style, and terminated his performing career permanently.

Some historical studies use the term ‘semi-colonialism’ to describe the specific colonial states in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century China that created a unique social formation characterized by the coexistence of colonialism and native feudal structure.⁴⁶ Helan Yang further clarifies these unique states by noting that in interwar Shanghai, ‘three outwardly contradictory ideologies – colonialism, cosmopolitanism, and nationalism – were intersected and intertwined’.⁴⁷ I suggest that each of these ideologies appears to contribute, in different ways, to the trajectory of Ding's unusual performing career and the formation of his idiosyncratic performance style.

Ding's conservatory years (1928–35) and prime years (1935–7) coincide perfectly with the ‘Nanjing decade’ (1928–37), a historical period during which the Nationalist government⁴⁸ began building the institutional framework for development that allowed China to enjoy relative peace and prosperity.⁴⁹ In this period, colonization greatly increased the size of the international community in Shanghai. Ding's teacher Zakharov was one of many Russian expatriates who resided in the extraterritorial areas of the city. These colonized areas provided a safe shelter and a stable environment in which these exiled talents, many of them highly skilled, could live and work. China's openness to foreign influence during this time created a vibrant and stimulating intellectual and cultural environment, making Shanghai the centre of a vigorous hybrid modern culture.⁵⁰ Zakharov's presence at the Conservatory, where Western music was generally valued higher than traditional Chinese music, handed Ding the rare opportunity to learn a broad range of Western pieces under a Russian curriculum and with a world-class pianist. Under these colonially induced circumstances, Ding transformed from an amateur Chinese instrument player into a professional pianist. The ‘colonial’ training Ding received was demonstrated not only by the pieces he played when he was a student but also by the stark discrepancy in repertoire between his live solo performances – in which he almost exclusively played canonical classical pieces – and his accompaniment performances, in which he only played works by Chinese composers. This discrepancy can arguably be explained by one of the social features of semi-colonialism: the segregation of audiences in 1930s China, namely between the expatriates with high educational and cultural levels and the peasant majority of China, which was fuelled with vigorously rising nationalism. Based on the training he received and the repertoire he performed, it can be assumed that Ding preferred to perform and more often performed for the former in his early years.

The presence of a large international community in Shanghai and other semi-colonial Chinese cities, including Tianjin where Ding held two recitals of an all-Western programme in his prime years, created an unprecedented scale of cosmopolitanism in these Chinese cities. In interwar Shanghai, however, cosmopolitanism was asymmetric as the involvement of the Chinese was limited. In concerts given by professional musicians, Chinese audiences were almost non-existent. The unique social condition resulted in a huge market for live performance of Western classical music. The lack of professional pianists in China provided Ding and other first-generation Chinese pianists with the otherwise impossible conditions to perform classical music in front of audiences from all over the world. This explains the dominance of canonical classical pieces, a relatively transnational and universal musical language, in Ding's live performances in his prime years. These colonial and cosmopolitan factors made his historic recitals possible, producing the peak of his performing career and making him a pioneering figure in Chinese pianism.

These factors influenced not only Ding's musical career and repertoire, but also his performance style. Although there is no sound recording documenting Ding's piano performance of Western pieces, in his recordings of the selected Chinese works, some signs of Russian influence can still be found. Having analysed twenty recordings of the first thirty-two bars of a Mazurka of Fryderyk Chopin, Nicholas Cook found that the use of phrase arching is particularly associated with Russian or Russian-trained pianists.⁵¹ There are other studies suggesting that Russian performers tend to articulate large-scale structures with a clear distinction between sections.⁵² In Ding's performance, this Russian tendency is commonly observed. He constantly marks sectional and sub-sectional boundaries by pronounced dynamic variation, a feature of the phrase-arching strategy. Amid a fast and flowing general tempo, these dynamic variations sound particularly prominent, creating a strong sense of sectionalization. This stylistic tendency may possibly be inherited from his Russian teacher, Zakharov, the only piano teacher in Ding's life.

After the ‘Nanjing decade’, the balance between colonialism and nationalism was broken and it was the latter that dominated the country. Japan's invasion of China that began in 1937 and the series of wars between China and Western countries since 1839 naturally caused China to be deeply suspicious of Western institutions and world views.⁵³ The Chinese developed a strong aversion to foreign dominance. This social sentiment, together with a mass exodus of expatriates, led to a rapidly shrinking market for the performance of classical music on Chinese soil, resulting in Ding's transition period (1937–56). The Communist regime's extreme political stances after it took power in 1949 further pushed China's nationalist and anti-West sentiment to new heights, leading to the termination of Ding's career as a Western instrument performer. From a concert pianist who performed canonical classical pieces to a composer who composed Chinese music, Ding transformed himself from a ‘colonial’ pianist to a nationalist composer. His short-lived career as a pianist and his limited exposure to European pianistic traditions (his seven-year study with Zakharov probably the only source) may be important factors resulting in his literal and seemingly idiosyncratic performance style.

Putting Ding's performance in a wider context, while some stylistic features are likely to be inherited from Zakharov, others sound noticeably out of fashion with stylistic convention of his time. For example, previous studies indicate that in early recordings, pianists – including those from the Russian tradition – tend to play with a great extent of hand asynchrony,⁵⁴ unnotated arpeggiation,⁵⁵ and rhythmic alternation.⁵⁶ Some even weaken metrical organizations for projecting long phrases⁵⁷ and incorporate a certain degree of improvisation.⁵⁸ All these features are common among early twentieth-century pianists but largely absent in Ding's performance. In contrast, Ding's metrical regularity, fast and even tempo, and long-range dynamic variation make his playing sound literal, measured, and lacking spontaneity, an approach that greatly differs from the mainstream style of his time. In addition, José Bowen finds that conductors from the previous generations tend to employ different tempi across sections whereas modern conductors’ tempo tends to be more even throughout a piece or a movement.⁵⁹ He and Robert Philips both note that performers in early recordings tend to use more internal and expressive rubato than those of our time.⁶⁰ Ding's fast and even tempo, another important feature that contributes to his literal and measured style, may sound somehow out of touch with the style that was prevalent at his time. His reduced sectional flexibility also contradicts the stylistic tendency of many pianists from the Russian tradition, who favours a more structuralist approach to tempo variation.⁶¹

Today, Ding is remembered as a great composer in China. His statue stands firmly in the centre of the main campus of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. In comparison, his legacy of piano performance seems tarnished despite his historic achievements.⁶² That his career as a pianist, compared with that as a composer, is extremely short-lived certainly plays a part in this reception. In addition, it may also be due to political reasons. Ding's conservatory years and prime years all happened during China's Nationalist era. In contrast, his compositional success was achieved under the Communist regime.⁶³ After taking power, the Chinese Communist Party showed a tendency to develop a narrative that downplays the achievement of their predecessors.⁶⁴ It would not be surprising if this narrative has been exerted to cross-era Chinese musicians such as Ding (i.e., a narrative that understates his identity as a ‘colonial’ pianist in the Nationalist era and emphasizes his achievements as a nationalist composer in the Communist time).

Outside his country, Ding and his performances remain almost completely unnoticed. This can be due to both historical and musical reasons. First, although Ding visit Europe, his main purpose was to study instead of to perform. Arriving in Paris at 34 years of age, he enrolled at the Paris Conservatoire as a composition student. His aim was to better equip himself with the most advanced compositional techniques and knowledge so that he could bring them back to his homeland and use them in his own pieces with a view to strengthening China's soft power. Although he performed on a few occasions during his time in Paris (Figure 1), he did so as a composition student rather than an established pianist. The pieces he played were mainly those he himself composed during his brief Paris stay and he did not give any recital or perform any of the canonical classical repertoire that he had played in China.⁶⁵ As a result, his pianistic ability went almost totally unnoticed by European audiences of his time.

The second reason appears to be related the repertoire in his recordings. These were entirely of Chinese piano works, which may have sounded too alien to the Western audience. Studying with Zakharov for seven years and playing mostly canonical classical pieces in his early years, he obviously would not have refused to record classical music. His eldest daughter claimed in an informal interview that under those political circumstances and fervent anti-West sentiment, it was impossible for her father to record Western pieces, which were deemed a ‘crime’.⁶⁶ Giving up on his career as a ‘colonial’ pianist at an early age and failing to record any Western pieces, Ding and his performances remain largely unknown outside his country through sound reproduction technology, a powerful way of spreading music that just started to change the ecology of music listening.

Conclusions and future research

One main contribution of this article comes from the increased visibility outside China of a highly regarded musician whose early career as a performer is largely neglected. As seen in the preceding discussion, a critical examination of Ding Shande's performing career and performance style not only helps paint a fuller picture of his biography, but also deepens our understanding of the early history of piano performance in China and the sociocultural context in which music performance took place in the country. Ding's unique career trajectory, evolving repertoire, and idiosyncratic performance style all exemplify that the concept of semi-colonialism should not be considered as a mere dichotomy between the East and the West in twentieth-century China, but as a cluster of diverse thoughts and varying actions of the dominating and dominated. It is the volatility of this concept that may have had a significant impact on both Ding's performing career and his performance style, two essential elements of his biography that are strongly interwoven.

In this article, I have shown that performers’ performances are just as important in biographical writings as is the story of their lives, and that interweaving the two helps develop a more thorough and comprehensive understanding of the musical persona of an individual performer. The rapidly changing political landscape and unique sociocultural conditions in twentieth-century China influenced Ding's musical career trajectory that saw him transforming from a ‘colonial’ pianist to a nationalist composer. It also resulted in a dramatic change in his piano repertoire and shaped his performance style, which demonstrates, one the one hand, some Russian traits and, one the other, some out-of-fashion features judged by the stylistic convention of his time.⁶⁷

It is important to state that this article does not aim to offer a full biography of Ding as his piano performance activities only occupied a small part of his entire musical career. Rather, it contributes to his biographical construction by examining and summarizing his performing activities, performed repertoire, and features of his performance style, and by discussing these materials within the sociocultural context of twentieth-century China. I believe that a deepened understanding of his performing career and performance style can facilitate, instead of hindering, that of his career trajectories as a composer and an educator. It can also shed light on the history and style of the Chinese piano ‘school’ at large.

Despite being the first Chinese pianist to play in a recital and make solo piano recordings, and having judged some of the most important international piano competitions such as the International Chopin Competition in 1960 and the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 1964,⁶⁸ Ding's contribution to piano performance in China goes far beyond his historic performances. After the death of the likes of Zakharov and Mario Paci (1878–1946) and the mass exodus of expatriates in the 1940s, this first generation of Chinese pianists became the pillars of China's piano education. In his private music school, Ding taught many students who subsequently developed successful careers and have become influential pianists. They include Central Conservatory's emeritus professor Zhou Guangren (1928–2022), whose grand-pupil Li Yundi (born in 1982) won the First Prize at the International Chopin Competition in 2000, the first Chinese pianist to have won this prestigious award. This article lays the foundation for future research into the full biography of Ding and into Chinese pianism in general. These research projects will need to include the examination of Ding's musical contribution as a piano teacher, which in turn helps construct the genealogy of the Chinese piano ‘school’ that has become increasingly prominent in the international music arena in recent years.

Nevertheless, Ding was by no means the only pianist in 1930s China. Zakharov taught in Shanghai for fifteen years – from his arrival in 1929 until his death in 1944. Dozens of Chinese pianists were trained by him and some of them were no less accomplished than Ding. Future research can be directed towards constructing a more comprehensive ‘Chinese piano school’ by examining the careers and styles of some of these equally influential Chinese pianists. In addition, since I have shown that Ding's recordings demonstrate some Russian traits, it would be worth investigating in what ways the Russian methods influenced the performance style of Chinese pianists and to what extent Chinese pianists inherited the Russian tradition. Apart from the stylistic properties I noted in this article, these influences may well be noticed in the areas of pianistic techniques, repertoire, curriculum, and teaching philosophies. Recordings of other early Chinese pianists are also readily available to modern listeners and musicologists. Empirical analysis of these historical documents will offer some fresh insights into the stylistic evolution of and individual differences in the performances of Chinese pianists and Chinese piano works.

Lastly, in this study, the investigation of his performance style is solely based on the analysis of his recordings of Chinese pieces. Since, unfortunately, Ding did not record any Western pieces, it may be necessary to examine his performance through an ethnographic approach, although it would be difficult to collect sufficient and informative data in this respect, as mentioned earlier. China's stringent zero-Covid policy that had lasted for three years and the mass infection thereafter severely affected social mobility and human interaction, poses more challenges to this already daunting task. However, without listening to and analysing any performance of Western compositions, the knowledge about Ding's performance style can hardly be complete. The ethnographic approach will also contribute to systematic studies of Ding's legacy, which may shed new light on his reception both within and outside China. These are some of the important lacunas that need to be filled in future research.