Article September 27, 2004 Issue

From Mao to Mozart

Making music with the Shanghai String Quartet

Text and Photographs By Kim Shippey-Staff

Conversing With Chinese Violinist Weigang Li (pron. way-gong lee) of the Shanghai String Quartet is a bit like listening to the cavatina movement from Beethoven's Quartet Opus 130—which Li considers one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written. The cadences of Li's voice are soft, self-effacing—and, yes, musical.

"I could listen to the cavatina almost every day," he told me, "and always discover different nuances in it. And it's those kinds of nuances that our quartet is trying to bring to its performances. Most of the masterpieces we like to play—by Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart, Brahms, Schumann—were composed under some remarkable inspiration. And for us to do justice to those works today, we have to try to recreate the spiritual dimension in them. Some of Beethoven's late quartets, for example, were so huge—so complex—that I could spend the rest of my life trying to achieve even some of his spiritual depth."

Li readily admits he is not well equipped to plumb those depths, partly because he grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution when it was extremely difficult to pursue religious beliefs. "I didn't stand a chance," he says. "But it would be foolish for me to say I don't believe in a Supreme Being just because I don't yet know enough about Him (or Her). The Earth is too awesome a place for there not to be such a Being, a divine Creator. So, for now, while these concepts are still vague for me, music is the way I make my connections."

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