A man of exceptional conduct
Yin Jiongjie, 24, shares his experience of competitions, older musicians and the art of leading an orchestra, Chen Nan reports.
Like many young musicians, Yin Jiongjie has participated in competitions around the world, which he says is a great way of gaining experience by working with symphony orchestras, as well as an opportunity to raise your visibility.
When it comes to dealing with unexpected situations right before or during a competition, the 24-year-old conductor also has answers.
A day before he competed during the first round of the 57th Besancon International Competition for Young Conductors in France in 2021, for example, Yin fell ill. “Maybe it was because of spoiled food I had eaten the day before”, he says. He only managed one piece of candy before going onstage and didn’t think that he would make it to the final, although he did. The jury decided not to award a Grand Prix that year, as the high standards of the finalists made it impossible to decide between them. Yin and the two other finalists were given a Special Mention instead. “Jong-Jie Yin, the youngest of the finalists, had a very good mastery of the music, considering his young age,” says Paul Daniel, jury president.
For the competitions abroad, Yin Jiongjie performs as Yin Jong-Jie, which he believes is easier for non-Chinese to pronounce.
In November, he participated in the Grzegorz Fitelberg International Competition for Conductors, one of the most prestigious competitions in Poland. During the first round, his performance was interrupted by a sudden power failure. He left the stage and waited for 10 minutes until the power returned. “I was neither worried nor nervous because it just happened and I could do nothing about it,” he says. Yin returned to finish his performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No 3 Eroica. The result was also surprisingly good and unexpected to Yin. He won first prize, the Gold Baton, and toured Poland with a performance that featured Dvorak’s Symphony No 9 From the New World.
As one of the most exciting young Chinese conductors on the scene, Yin has been appointed assistant conductor of the China National
Symphony Orchestra and is touring with veteran pianist Yin Chengzong and the Xiamen Philharmonic Orchestra. At the same time, he is also pursuing his master’s degree at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing.
He attributes his ability to deal with emergencies to his parents, who taught him to take things easy and enjoy music, rather than placing high expectations on competitions.
Born and raised in Kunming in Yunnan province, Yin is the son of two musicians who graduated from the Yunnan Arts University, and grew up listening to classical music and watching classical music performances.
His father, who is a baritone and a vocal teacher at the university, bought lots of recordings and DVDs of world-renowned classical musicians and symphony orchestras, to ensure that his only son had as much exposure to music as possible.
As a child, Yin learned to play the piano and the violin. He gave up the latter because he found it too hard to master, and focused instead on the piano. Even then, he had decided that he would become a conductor one day.
“There can be over 100 musicians in an orchestra but there is only one conductor,” he says. “The conductor is the only member of an orchestra who has no instrument, and makes no sound of their own throughout the performance. Instead, the conductor is like the composer’s messenger, which is a magical experience.”
When he was 14, Chen Lin and Chen Bing, two conductors from the Central Conservatory of Music came to Kunming to choose students. Yin’s father allowed him to perform for them.
Standing on the stage of the theater at the Yunnan Arts University, Yin raised his baton and demonstrated how he would conduct to a recording of Dvorak’s Symphony No 9 From the New World. Ten months later, he moved to Beijing and enrolled at the Middle School Affiliated to the Central Conservatory of Music and later studied at the university under Chen Lin.
As a child, one of Yin’s favorite hobbies was playing soccer. He is a big fan of Real Madrid, and compares the role of a conductor to midfielders, who, transitioning between attack and defense, help a team dominate and control the match.
“It is the conductor’s responsibility to understand the music and convey it through gestures clearly enough that the musicians understand and perform as one person,” he says. “For young conductors, working with symphony orchestras is the key to growing fast.”
Since 2015, Yin has been chosen by the Central Conservatory of Music to participate in several master classes with conductors, among them South Korea’s Chung Myung-whun and Canada’s Yannick Nezet-Seguin.
“One of my approaches to learning is observing great conductors rehearsing,” he says. “It allows me to learn how they work, and inspires me to think as a conductor.”
He also admits that first time he stood in front of a group of musicians who were much older and experienced than him was fairly scary. “It’s not easy to get an orchestra to agree on a young conductor’s interpretation,” he says.
Yin has had some great experiences working with symphony orchestras since he was first offered the opportunity. By “great”, Yin means that both he and the orchestra shared the same understanding of a piece, and so the rehearsals went smoothly.
He has also had some bad experiences. “When I feel that I am not managing to bridge the music between the composer and the audience, I know that it’s time to stop for a while. I feel then that I am leading the orchestra into (metaphorical) quicksand rather than bringing the different sounds together,” he says. “I just pull myself out.”
So he’d pause the rehearsal at times he realizes he is not leading the orchestra into the direction he wanted.
“There’s a huge gap between the training you receive in a conservatory and what is required of a professional conductor. The most basic thing is to build and expand my repertoire, and gain a deep understanding of each piece,” he says. “It is a skill that involves psychology, body language, knowledge of history, culture and music, and a sensitivity to everything that makes us human.”