by Kevin T McEneaney
Last Saturday at Sosnoff Concert Hall a sampling of Chinese music was performed with The Orchestra Now and soloists from China under the baton of Jingdong Cai under the title “The Sound of Spring.” The Chinese calendar is an ancient lunar calendar (lunar calendars are more accurate than solar calendars). January 29 is the beginning of the Lunar New Year which is the year of the Snake.
They opened with a traditional New Year favorite Spring Festival Overture (1956) by Li Huanzhi. This orchestral composition became so popular in China that in 2007 this overture was selected to be carried and broadcast into space on China’s first lunar probe. Festive and robust, this work celebrates new beginnings with a contagious optimism in sounds emitted by the orchestra. The opening Allegro features a strong oboe role magnificently played by Quinton Bodnár-Smith and answered by violins under Concertmaster Enikő Samu and cellos under Jihyun Hwang. Throughout the concert, the large cello section was memorably impressive.
Little Sisters of the Grasslands pipa concerto (1972) by Liu Dehai (1937-2022) featured a recent Bard graduate student, JimOu Anastasia Dong, from the Master of Arts in Chinese Music and Culture displaying her mastery of the pipa, a pear-shaped instrument somewhat similar to the mandolin. Liu Dehai invented innovative virtuoso-style fingering for the instrument which was on full display by Dong. I was immensely impressed by the warm emotional heft of the performance. This was a memorable treasure that I would love to hear again!
Ink Plum for erhu and orchestra (2019) by Yu Hongmei (b. 1971) celebrated the qualities of the ink plum blossom in its beauty and delicacy. This was a synesthesian experience, a melding of poetic sounds with lyrical improvisations that offer the effects of poetic text as musical utterance. The association of written poetry with music is often a binary experience in Chinese works. Yan Guowei on the single string erhu projected a range of expressive emotions (just as a calligraphic ink pen on paper can invoke) with both deft and soaring emotions that were breathtaking in this concerto.
East-West III: Tao for All (2024) by Zhang Shuai (b. 1979) delivered an intense blend of Eastern and Western musical language that explored philosophical and aesthetic themes linked to nature and the philosophy of the Tao Te Ching. I found this work to be a delightfully complex marvel, too sophisticated to be appreciated by a single hearing. The blending of Eastern and Western motifs was like a thousand-piece table puzzle that must be completed in ten minutes! I was so astonished that I felt I could not go on with the concert and was relieved to discover that there was an Intermission.
Cang Cai concerto for percussion by Tang Jianping (b. 1955) offered a dynamic, virtuoso percussion experience by Zhang Jingli, a faculty member of the Central Conservatory of Music. Percussion is the oldest musical instrument (flute is the second oldest) and the Chinese tradition of sophisticated percussion with gongs and cymbals goes back many millennia, gongs providing a “cang” sound and cymbals providing “cai” sound. This dialectic offers a kinetic soundscape. This unusual, dramatic, and dynamic performance on two different wooden marimbas supplied amusing extroverted astonishment.
Majestic Gallop concerto for sheng and orchestra by Xinyan Li, a visiting professor of music at the US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music, employed Mongolian melodies with the polyphonic sheng instrument skillfully played by award-winning Wang Lei. The music celebrates the various gaits of a horse and one can hear the joyous rhythm of a journey through a majestic landscape surrounded by impressive mountains. This premiere was commissioned for this performance by the US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music. I found the vibrato and glissando so enchanting that my imagination created a cinematic experience in my head.
The Majestic Land (2020) by Li Shaosheng, director of the Wuxi Symphony Orchestra, portrayed the cycle of a single day from sunrise to sunset. This work also delivered a cinematic effect: from sunrise over Mount Tai to rural homes, the morning rush hour of bustling cities with their hectic midday activities to sunset in rural communities with the majesty of clear nighttime skies with sparkling stars overhead. A startling abrupt dynamic ambiance is achieved when the orchestra suddenly ceases to play while a solo piano leaps tenderly into lyrical astonishment, the gentle solo echoing in one’s mind with enhanced wonder!
This was an unusual and marvelous concert that limned the contours of Chinese music that worked in Western musical formats with traditional Chinese themes that were performed simultaneously on more than one intellectual and emotional level with music that remains both Chinese and universal. Much more is happening in contemporary Chinese music than the American public is aware of.
