Musical diplomacy's perfect harmony

The China Philharmonic Orchestra will perform in Iran as part of a 14-day tour taking in five countries on the Silk Road. Photo provided to China Daily

The world gets a nuclear accord, and Iran gets an orchestral visit that makes history. Chen Jie reports.

When the first sweet, chirpy notes of the Butterfly Lovers' Violin Concerto flutter over the heads of an audience in Teheran next week they will herald success in a long quest to bring the Chinese Philharmonic Orchestra to Iran.

That feat, achieved through laborious efforts over many months, is all the more remarkable given the deafening indifference the orchestra faced in Iran before its diplomatic overtures finally struck a positive note. Its country's top diplomats were, understandably, preoccupied with a matter of much weightier importance: searching for accord with big world powers over the country's nuclear program.

"It was risky," says Wu Jiatong, CEO of Wu Promotions, which has arranged most of the orchestra's international tours over the past 10 years.

"No one knew the result of the nuclear deal and nobody was interested in a concert tour."

The nuclear issue was finally settled three weeks ago when an accord was announced in Vienna and, as if on cue, on Aug 13 an audience in Vahdat Hall in Teheran will be able to hear not only the Butterfly Lover's Concerto, one of China's most famous pieces of modern music, by Chen Gang and He Zhanhao, but the Polovtsian Dances from the opera Prince Igor by Borodin, Symphony No 5 by Tchaikovsky and the overture to the opera Ruslan and Ludmila by Mikhail Glinka.

The orchestra, which will perform on two consecutive nights, will thus become the first from the country to visit Iran.

The tempo of its diplomatic push to play in the Islamic republic increased several beats early this year when, through the good offices of a former cultural counselor for China in Teheran, the company contacted the Roudaki Foundation, part of the Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance.

"That was just the beginning," says the orchestra's director, Li Nan.