Bright Sheng: Postcards (1997) ~ Chen Yi: Fiddle Suite for Huqin and String Orchestra (1998) ~ Zhou Long: King Chu Doffs His Armor (1991) ~ Tan Dun: Orchestral Theatre I: Xun (1990). Xu Ke, huqin, and Min Xiao Fen, pipa. Jindong Cai, conductor. Cosmopolitan Symphony Orchestra. Town Hall, New York, March 24, 2002.
In a program format that is becoming more familiar to Western audiences, New York's Cosmopolitan Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Jindong Cai presented engaging orchestral offerings by four world-class composers of Chinese origin, whose works now appear with growing regularity on the programs of orchestras in the U.S. and around the world.
While the program notes did not identify any of the works as New York premieres, this reviewer suspects that these powerful works were probably being heard for the first time, and most certainly for the first time together, by the nearly full house at Town Hall. Actually, Maestro Cai deserves particular credit not only for his judicious selection of these fascinating works, but also for their sequencing. Interestingly, their level of intensity and abstraction seemed to grow from one work to the next. Also commendable were conductor Cai's efforts to introduce the audience to either performance or background aspects of the pieces, since the printed program only described the composers and performers. This prompts the observation that conductors of new music can similarly make an audience's encounter with new works a more or less successful one. Being intimately familiar with the technical aspects of the music and perhaps with the intent of the composer, conductors should play a leadership role in stimulating the receptivity of audiences to contemporary musical expression by enhancing listener understanding.
In his introductory remarks to Bright Sheng's Postcards, a short work in four movements, maestro Cai pointed out that each movement incorporates familiar Chinese folksong material and that one commentator has described the work as "Four love songs from China." Indeed, from the initial notes of the first movement, "From the Mountains," the folk-inspired character of the work is unmistakable. As a consequence, one is immediately immersed in an ambiance seemingly remote in space and time. This love song is a delicate nostalgic reverie that ends with a gentle tap of the tam tam. The second movement, "From the River Valley," begins with a sprite hustle and bustle, suggesting a workaday freneticism with its simultaneities of movement and sound, and ends unexpectedly with a contrasting suspended chord, as if the preceding activity were suddenly captured in a freeze frame. A relentless motoric drive of successive eighth-note figurations begins the third movement, "From the Savage Land," and continues until finally ending with a short series of halting break-like accents. "Wish You Were There," the fourth and perhaps the most emotionally touching movement of the work, seems to suggest (in contrast to the title): "wish I was there (and not here)" and to reflect a poignant sense of longing.
The Fiddle Suite for Huqin and String Orchestra is one of composer Chen Yi's most-played works (with four performances already scheduled for later this year and next in the U.S. and in Germany). Actually, the huqin (pronounced hoo-chin) is the name for a family of Chinese bowed instruments--essentially a two-silk-stringed, vertically-played violin or, as the instrument is called in Chinese, the erhu--that vary in size and character, and whose signature sound can have many varied applications. With the Fiddle Suite, Chen Yi has created a fascinating exploration of the many capabilities of this quintessentially Chinese instrument, employing the characteristics and capacities of a medium-, large-, and small-sized (or "Peking Opera") erhu, respectively, in each of the Fiddle Suite's three movements. A demonstration of these instruments by the featured soloist, world-renowned erhu master Xu Ke, preceded the performance of the suite.
In the first movement, "Singing," a figuratively singing folk-like unison of the strings soon becomes a polyphonic arrangement that eventually retreats into the background as a contrasting dissonance to the erhu's melodiousness. Later on, the cellos recap the opening folk melody as a preparation for a virtuosic erhu passage that sounds like a cadenza-like improvisation of the melody.
According to conductor Cai, the second movement, entitled "Reciting," was intended by Chen Yi to use the erhu to replicate the exaggerated reciting voice used in the Chinese operatic style. It seems to this reviewer that the closest Western analog to this reciting style is Schoenbergian 'Sprechstimme,' the highly inflected and elongated articulation of syllables one hears in Pierrot Lunaire. As the movement begins, trills, tremolos and glissandi in the strings set the sonic stage for the larger and deeper sounding erhu's recitation of the poem Bright Moon, how oft art thou with us? by Sung Dynasty poet Su Shi (1036-1101). The reciting is joined by the strings, which soon grow silent as the erhu goes on to complete its declaiming. Once the erhu is finished, the strings return with the trills, tremolos and glissandi, and then evaporate.
In "Dancing," the higher-pitched small erhu gives a biting edginess to an intensely frenetic third movement, whose propulsive energy one expects can only come to a sudden stop, as eventually it does. Soloist Xu Ke, who has performed this work before to great acclaim and who is scheduled to perform it in the future, gave an effortless, yet brilliant, bravura performance that was truly the high point of the concert.
Zhou Long's King Chu Doffs His Armor is a powerful and wonderfully dramatic orchestral memoir that showcases China's other signature instrument, the pipa. It is based on an actual historical account of a decisive clash between warring kings that, since then, has become a part of China's theatrical canon in the Peking Opera (and, more recently, was incorporated into director Chen Kaige's 1993 epic motion picture Farewell My Concubine). Following the ominously somber opening that soon develops into a martial mood suggesting warlike hostilities, Zhou Long then introduces the pungent accentuating strumming of the solo pipa. The spellbinding artistry of Min Xiao Fen on extended, seemingly narrative, solo passages was an ideal complement to the excitement of Zhou Long's imaginative orchestral writing in this work. Indeed, the orchestra under maestro Cai's inspiring direction seemed to have a real feel for this piece.
The last work on the program, Tan Dun's Orchestral Theatre I: Xun, was also its most percussive, even employing occasional single and antiphonal shouts by the orchestra's musicians and full-hand slaps on the fingerboards of stringed instruments. The xun is an ancient Chinese instrument, like a pear-shaped clay pipe, whose soft voice has the hollow resonant sound of an ocarina. A hauntingly nightmarish and primitive quality suffuses much of this highly dramatic and exquisite work, which, judging from the audience's polite response, seems not to have been appreciated as much as it so well deserved, and this despite the recent Academy Award winner's presence in the auditorium.
As a representative sampling of the serious orchestral work being produced today by Chinese contemporary composers living and working in the U.S., this concert was a thoughtfully presented and rewarding experience, and successfully points the way for similar presentations in the future.