The stages of development of China's piano school as a holistic systemic
phenomenon are conditionaed by a number of factors: introduction of forms of
professional piano education in Harbin and Shanghai in the first half of the twentieth
century, establishing and further development of a powerful network of music
schools, implementation of European forms of education and the widest possible
involvement of foreign professional teachers and performers in the system of piano
education. At the first stage, the influences of foreign piano schools were manifested
in the tendency of Chinese pianists to get education from well-known foreign
specialists in China (Mario Pachi, Leo Orphan, Boris Zakharov, Alexander
Cherepnin, Vladimir Gartz, Aaron Avshalomov, Eleonora Druzhinina, Tetiana
Kravchenko) and to acquire professional education in the West.
For this purpose, the panorama of the dispersal of Chinese pianists around the
world in order to gain professional knowledge has been reconstructed: in Europe
(France, England, Belgium, Switzerland, Poland, Russia) and the United States
(Juilliard School, Yale School of Music, Cornell University, Institute of Music in
Chicago). This experience helped to acquaint Chinese pianists with over three
hundred years’ existence of different Western European national schools, with the
widest piano repertoire, as well as performing and pedagogical methods of the West.
Taken together, this helped to improve their personal skills and then apply the
acquired knowledge in China upon their return.
The outlined tendency of integration of the principles of western piano art into
Chinese culture at the stage of formation of the national piano school is characterized
as centripetal. Centrifugal movement is also described, when Chinese pianists
demonstrated a high level of performing professionalism, participating in a great
number of concerts in the West.
It is noted that in the desire to comprehend and apply in practice the
achievements of the West, the dominant trend at all stages of development of the
Chinese piano school is still the preservation of its national traditions.
The study of the Chinese piano pedagogical-performing school is conditioned
by the need for a complex consideration of socio-cultural principles that have
influenced its formation and development, the systematization of the concept of
"Chinese piano school" in terms of levels and features of typological unity. The
importance of the previously unexplored sphere of Sino-Polish cultural relations in
musicology is derived as an effective factor in the development of the Chinese piano
school.
In the context of intercultural dialogue, the fundamentals and pedagogical
principles of the unique Piano School of Zhou Guangzhen are studied which formed
under the influence of Chinese, French, Italian, German, Hungarian, Russian and
Czech piano schools and contributed to the universality of the pianist’s figure and
ascent to higher forms of professionalism. The specificity of the performing and
pedagogical school of the outstanding pianist was defined as polynational, which
testified to the emergence of a new phenomenon of global time among the
performing schools - the Zhou Guangzhen polynational piano school.
The essence of the concept of "piano performing school of China" as a holistic
phenomenon of Chinese musical art, which contains many features of typological
unity with Western national schools, is revealed. The piano performing school of
China is a value-oriented cultural phenomenon of the performing and pedagogical
tradition, in which the leading principles of practical activity of pianists are fixed; it is
a set of aesthetic views and knowledge, united in a system of principles that are
preserved and transmitted in the performance practice of future generations.
A special place in the dissertation is devoted to the study of the first attempts to
open departments of concertmaster and chamber ensemble in Chinese conservatoires.
International resonance of the achievements of the Chinese piano school is
proved by the examples of wide development of concert-performing activities of
Chinese performers, their brilliant victories in the most difficult and prestigious
international contests of pianists on the world and recognition of scientific
musicological and methodical works of the leading Chinese teachers of piano
performance and pedagogy.
The issue of the functioning of the Chinese piano school, as well as the very
concept of "piano performance school of China" has not previously been considered
in research papers.
