Symphony of Millions.(classical music)

In March, Chen Qigang, a Chinesecomposer who is supervising the music program for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics, received a National Spirit Achievers Award at a press event in Beijing. He was one of ten artists and businesspeople to receive the prize, which came courtesy of the Chinese magazine Life and of Mercedes-AMG, the highperformance-vehicle division of Mercedes-Benz. The award ceremony, typical of modern China in its mixture of nationalist bombast, materialist excess, and cultural bizarrerie, took place in the 798 art zone--a cavernous factory complex that has been converted into exhibition space. Four AMG vehicles were on display, surrounded by models clad in silver-lame outfits, in presumably inadvertent homage to "Goldfinger." Projected on the walls and the ceiling of the factory were the words "Will," "Power," and "Dream," with Chinese characters to match. "We believe that Mercedes-AMG will infuse powerful new vigor into China's national car culture," Klaus Maier, the head of Mercedes-Benz China, said. Chen stood to one side, a quizzical expression on his face. Before the ceremony began, he had said to me, "I have no idea what is happening."

While classical musicians around the world fight for a glimmer of media attention, their counterparts in China have no trouble drawing the spotlight. Western classical music is big business, or, at least, official business. Chen Qigang, a mild-mannered fifty-two-year-old whose works elegantly fuse Western-modernist and traditional Chinese elements, was reminded of this last year, when he moved from Paris, where he had resided since 1984, back to Beijing, where he had lived during the Cultural Revolution. In a conversation at his Beijing apartment, he recalled the world of his youth as a repressed, violent place, where classical music was forbidden. Then, in Paris, he had grown accustomed to a culture in which the same small cohort of connoisseurs attended new-music concerts night after night. On a visit to Beijing last year, Chen was summoned to meet the film director Zhang Yimou, who made "Hero" and "House of Flying Daggers," and who is in charge of the Olympic ceremonies. Zhang inquired if Chen had any "free time" in 2008. The next day, the composer met with Olympic officials, who asked him to cancel future plans. Chen agreed, and accepted an offer to run the music program, not only because he felt official pressure but because he relished the challenge of directing a retinue of fifty composers, from both classical and popular genres, to entertain a global audience. In America, he noted, no classical composer would be given such a task.

"For the past fifteen or twenty years, classical music has been very a la mode in China," Chen told me, in French. "The halls are full. There are many students. There might also be some difficulties. But there is a very powerful phenomenon at work in the education system. When I visited my old primary school, I found that, out of a class of forty students, thirty-six were studying piano. This points to the future."

Western musicians, administrators, and critics who visit China have lately come away murmuring observations along the lines of "classical music is exploding" and "the future of classical music lies in China." Between thirty million and a hundred million children are said to be learning piano, violin, or both, depending on which source you consult. When the New York Philharmonic was in Beijing last February, on the eve of its heralded visit to North Korea, the Associated Press offered this summary of a press conference given by Lorin Maazel: "Facing dwindling popularity in the West, classical music could receive a boost from a large Chinese population that is increasingly interested in other cultures, the music director of the New York Philharmonic said." Chinese virtuosos and composers crowd New York halls. In April, the Philharmonic presented the premiere of Tan Dun's Piano Concerto, with Lang Lang as the soloist; shortly afterward, the Metropolitan Opera revived Tan's 2006 opera, "The First Emperor," with Placido Domingo in the title role.

After a recent visit to Beijing, I had some doubts about China's putative lock on the musical future. Concert halls may be full and conservatories mobbed, but classical music is hobbled by commercial and political pressures. The creative climate, with its system of punishments and rewards, still resembles that of the late-period Soviet Union, which heavily influenced the development of China's musical institutions. At the same time, the wider soundscape of Beijing is as chaotically rich as that of any Western city: nights of experimental music, indie-rock shows soaked in hipster attitude, pop idols cavorting on HD monitors in malls, retirees singing Peking opera in parks. In the "Li Chi," or "Book of Rites," it is written, "The music of a well-ruled state is peaceful and joyous . . . that of a country in confusion is full of resentment . . . and that of a dying country is mournful and pensive." All three kinds of music, together with others that might well have confounded Confucian scholars, intersect in the People's Republic.

The most outwardly impressive symbol of China's musical ambition is the National Center for the Performing Arts, a colossal, low-slung, titanium-clad dome west of Tiananmen Square. Representations of the well-ruled state surround it: the Great Hall of the People is next door, and Zhongnanhai, the Party-leadership compound, lies across the avenue. An inscription above the center's entrance bears the signature of Jiang Zemin, who was China's President from 1993 to 2003, and made a show of admiring classical music. (After the death of Deng Xiaoping, Jiang told the press that he had consoled himself by listening to Mozart's Requiem through the night.) The president of the center, which Beijingers call the Egg, is a local potentate named Chen Ping, who has developed deluxe shopping malls in the eastern part of the city. The complex was originally ...