“I don’t think I’ve ever encountered this in my life before, writing something like this. It was so direct. Even though I didn’t know him personally, I was living in the same situation, and I could feel how he must have felt, the whole business of him being brave, and trying to tell the truth which was a hard thing to do at that time and in that place. And then, being sick and dying, which I could only imagine. He called it the dust: finally, the dust has come down to the ground. I am diagnosed, he said.”

It’s February 2020. The beginning of the coronavirus pandemic worldwide.

China has been in lockdown since January. The doctor who blew the whistle on the pandemic, Dr Li Wenliang, has been denounced by the authorities and forced to sign a retraction: rumours are swirling about what this virus actually is and what on earth is going on; everyone is frightened, and everyone is glued to the doctor’s blog which bravely chronicles his descent into illness. He is dying. And it is on the day of his death, February 6, that Gao Ping gets a message from one of his friends that says, “Well, as a composer, as a musician, don’t you have anything to say about our current time?”

Dr Li Wenliang died that night. The next morning China woke up to huge Chinese characters carved into the snow on a riverbank: Farewell Dr Li Wenliang. Gao Ping was immediately inspired to write Bitter Cold Night, finishing it very quickly, an experience he says was unlike any in his life before. In this programme, he speaks about what lockdown was like in the interior of China close to the epicentre, as one of the first to go into lockdown in the world. He speaks of the tragedy and martyring of Dr Li Wenliang, later named a National Martyr by the government; he speaks about what it is like to be a musician working under the auspices of China’s Communist regime; and he speaks about his piece, Bitter Cold Night, and the struggle of searching for words.

Host: Charlotte Willson

Guest: Gao Ping

Brought to you by SOUNZ Centre for New Zealand Music

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Moments in time

A composer's response to critical moments in time: The moments when time pivots and history changes course. Charlotte Wilson presents this series about the music of Aotearoa New Zealand that follows moments in our history that have had an impact on us and changed or altered who we are.

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