East Meeting West Brims with Innovation

As the final notes of the piano and guzheng rang out toward the riverbank, Lily Xie concluded a concerto entitled, "The Eternal Sorrow of Lin'an," marking the end of her first solo concert, East Meeting West.

The innovative nature of Xie's concert made it unlike any other. At only 15 years of age, Lily Xie transcended the standard mode of performance for piano concertos. Xie, a single person, performed "The Eternal Sorrow of Lin'an," featuring a guzheng and piano concerto! This was made possible by her using a player piano to record the piece. She edited the recording and played it through the player piano. During the concerto, Xie played guzheng along with the piano at the venue. This is the first performance to utilize a Steinway SPIRIO|r to perform a duet with a guzheng for a perfect rendition of a Chinese folk classic! This pioneering performance fused the essence of Chinese and Western music. It made Lily Xie Steinway's first innovative performer in the world to use the SPIRIO|r, a high-definition player piano and play it alongside the guzheng, a classic Chinese folk instrument.

Zhang Zhen'nong, a famous music teacher who served as the stage manager for this outdoor performance, did his utmost to enable his student to shine. Over the last two years, Zhang served as her instructor, guiding her one step at a time through semi-closed rehearsals. He reflected on the challenges this performance presented.
Basically, this performance was built off of professional, systematic, and rigorous training. Previously, Lily Xie completed a concerto for the piano and guzheng, "The Eternal Sorrow of Lin'an." She used the Steinway SPIRIO|r high-definition player piano, which offered digitized, hi-def recording and editing for the piano part of the performance. Xie played the guzheng part for that piece as the recording of the piano played through the SPIRIO|r, thus bringing the two instruments together in harmony! This might seem simple, but there were at least two major issues that needed to be overcome. First, the high-definition player piano needed to be capable of fully reproducing sound that was live quality. Second, there needed to be a smooth flow when it came to the speed and volume of the machine and the instruments. This traditionally is the flexibility that exists between performers, a space that now includes a high-definition player piano. Pianos from Steinway & Sons are the chosen instrument for 97% of pianists performing solo recitals. Naturally, on top of maintaining traditional art and technological innovation, a Steinway has its own unique features. The digital, high-definition sounds can be reproduced perfectly, and the keys as well and pedals are linked with unparalleled precision. The hardware ensured that the professional level of this innovative performance could be presented without a single flaw. This player piano was able to faithfully reproduce the way a piano sounds when played live. It accurately captured the detailed moments of every performance, which was then reproduced in high definition. This piano exists on an entirely different plane compared to other player pianos. As for the musician herself, Lily Xie is a 15-year-old girl who has resisted the siren's song of society's examination system for three years and put her very heart and soul into intensely practicing piano and guzheng as well as training to perform a concerto using the guzheng in conjunction with a player piano. While she was constantly working to increase her professional performance ability in playing the piano and guzheng, she also confronted the unprecedented challenge of an immersive performance that combined a human musician and machine without any sort of reference she could draw from. She needed to rely on her senses to feel, form and develop an extremely high degree of accuracy when working with this high-definition technology platform. This meant relying on precise muscle memory that could be triggered in an instant. Ultimately, Xie performed the concerto and was able to bring out the intensity and gentleness that lie behind this piece. As for how experts in the music field in China and around the world view this performance, Lily Xie tapped into her incredible talent, passion, and unending diligence to complete this innovative performance supported by Steinway. She has gone on to become the first in the world to put on a public duet with Steinway's SPIRIO|r high-definition player piano and a traditional Chinese instrument, the guzheng. This unique accomplishment has been picked up by media outlets domestically and internationally! As an instructor, I'd like to quote Liang Qichao's words from Young China to send a message to Lily Xie and people her age. "The intelligence young people have is the intelligence of our nation. Their strength is our nation's strength! The sea and time stretch out before you!"

Ms. Fan Fenglan, a Harvard-trained music teacher, was the one to initiate the East Meeting West Concert, a public performance featuring a player piano and guzheng played by the same person. She has over 20 years of rich experience in educating young people in music. Prodigious skill naturally attracts admiration. When talking about coming up with and pushing for this innovative performance, Fan excitedly shared the following.
The East Meeting West Concert inherits a rich history as it fuses Chinese and Western arts and stands as an innovative performance in music history. It pays homage to the guzheng's long history that spans over 2,500 years from the Warring States period to today. It uplifts the marvelous 313 years of history since the Italians invented the piano as well as the brilliant 169 years of history that Steinway has! East Meeting West includes a concerto featuring the guzheng, "the King of Eastern Instruments," and the piano, "the King of Western Instruments." It is a performance that is a picture of the links between Eastern and Western civilizations. Linking the past and present, this performance ties different times together as well as the East and West through a presentation of classics by Schumann, Beethoven, and Schubert and quintessential examples of Eastern music such as "The Chinese Legend of the Butterfly Lovers" and "The Eternal Sorrow of Lin'an." It empowers and shares the collective fate of humanity's music! This innovative recital pushes the boundaries of what is traditionally considered a concerto. Xie’s performance adds a diverse and innovative space to the traditional meaning of a recital. It is a clear display of how Steinway as an exquisite piano brand with over a hundred years of history has entered a new stage in its development with regard to technological innovation and bringing society a greater amount of artistic joy. Steinway continues to lead the world in digitizing music! I hope that Lily Xie’s global debut featuring both Steinway's SPIRIO|r piano and the guzheng will inspire global exchanges in areas like music, performance, movies, and architecture. In particular, I hope that this performance will expand young people's interest in Chinese and Western instruments. We want to promote more experimentation with combinations of the SPIRIO|r and Chinese, Western, African, and Latin American instruments as the digitization of music gets popularized. I hope the younger generation will feel eager and have confidence as digitized music and traditional arts merge. They should be able to feel the joy that comes with these technological innovations. I would like to see these developments be helpful for more communities and allow more families to enjoy tasteful art in their lives.

A witness to the artistic innovation that is East Meeting West, Mr. Ye Nian, is a guzheng instructor who takes pride in his many students, one of whom is Lily Xie. Xie has been under his tutelage for eight years and successfully took on the challenge of Steinway's innovative recital. Mr. Ye described the special nature of this recital's structure.

Lily Xie's recital featured a piano solo, a piano and guzheng concerto, and a piece performed on the guzheng and player piano. Her performance encapsulated 300 years of the piano's evolution. The guzheng, with its more than 2,500 years of history, was also present throughout the performance, which served as a clear display of the convergence of China and the West in the history of human art. It tied together the past and present as well as the inheritance of that history. Xie's recital presented the tension within a diverse culture and the beauty of a world full of differences! The guzheng she used during the recital was no ordinary instrument. It was a guzheng made in memory of the "Father of the Guzheng," China's only advanced expert in guzheng production and an inheritor of the UN's intangible culture, Xu Zhengao. The instrument commemorates his 80th birthday. The key parts of the instrument were made by Mr. Xu himself. The world of collectors praises this guzheng as a true masterpiece that is rare in this world. Along with the Chinese instrument that is the "pride of kings", the recital also featured the king of kings among Western instruments. The piano used for the recital was the D model of the SPIRIO|r high-definition player piano, which has been praised as the Rolls-Royce of pianos. The word "spirio" comes from Latin and means "to breathe". It is the musical narrative that describes Europa's romance and the Chinese stories of loyalty in love and giving back to one's country that evoke a resonance between the East and West. It's through the shared destiny of humanity, breathing as one, that Eastern and Western civilizations can appreciate one another and produce an innovative recital like East Meeting West that is excellent and unique. These are also the conditions for empowering a new generation of musicians with great prospects before them! I am eager to see more young musical explorers rise up in this innovative era!

Lily Xie may be young, but she is not wasting her time. She grew up in an artistic family in Beijing. Following in her family's footsteps, Xie is an active and bright high school student who excels in her studies. Besides strong academic abilities, she also has a love of figure skating. She has earned first place in several amateur competitions held by ISIAsia. Xie is passionate about public service and often serves as a volunteer to do charitable performances at retirement homes and hospitals. She is an avid reader and is a student volunteer hosting a program focused on popularizing famous literature on a radio station. Xie is passionate about music. She participated in six Steinway recitals in a span of two years, earning her the "First Steinway Challenge Cup". She will be performing her East Meeting West recital again in October of this year as an indoor benefit concert. In addition to showing the "secrets" of her piano and guzheng duet, the performance will feature exciting programming that is diverse and aimed at youth, including a trio ensemble, a violin and piano concerto, and collaborations with new musical talent.

（Sources：www.china.com）