Around the Music Festival

Fou Ts’ong（Fù cōng）, a pianist from China who has been in exile in the UK, died at a hospital in London on the 28th. He was infected with the new coronavirus. He was 86 years old. He won third place at the 5th International Chopin Piano Competition in 1955 and was the first Asian winner.

He was born in Shanghai during the Republic of China era in 1934. His father is Fu Lei, a translator and literary professor at Shanghai University of the Arts. He is taught the piano by the Italian conductor Mario Paci, who is also the founder of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. He studied abroad at the Warsaw Conservatory in 1953.

It was completely unknown until the 1955 Chopin International Piano Competition, but at the same time as winning the 3rd place, it won the Mazurkas Award and drew attention. At this year’s competition, there was also a ruckus that Judge Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli got angry and left as a result of Poland’s Adam Harasiewicz in first place and Vladimir Ashkenazy in second place.

After the competition, he started playing mainly in Poland, but was disgusted by the Chinese government’s repeated urges to return to his home country, and in 1959 he went into exile from Poland to England at the age of 25.

In 1958, China began a “great leap forward” policy that would lead to great hunger, and persecution of the intellectuals had also begun. The “Cultural Revolution”, which began in 1966 following the “Great Leap Forward,” was tragedy in which parents were persecuted and forced to commit suicide.

After that, he developed his activities based in London. Mozart played Chopin and was sometimes called a “piano poet.” The writer Hermann Hesse praised Fou Ts’ong’s Chopin, “It’s a miracle.” It is also known that he was close to Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim, Leon Fleisher and Radu Lupu.

In 1960, he married the daughter of violinist Yehudi Menuhin, Zamira Menuhin, and had a boy. However, he was divorced in 1969. After that, he remarried with Patsy Toh, who was born in Shanghai and was active in the UK. In 1982, he became an adjunct professor in the piano department of the Beijing Central Conservatory of Music. After that, he visited his home country for lectures and performances.

Photo：VCG