A new Lang Lang, female version?

The second piece of the HKPO's Saturday concert was also another Chinese piece. It was Reflection of the Moon on Erquan (二泉映月) which was originally written as an Erwu solo but has been re-arranged for a string orchestra by Henry Shek. The piece has a very interesting history.  According to the programme notes, the original composer was a Taoist priest at the Taoist Temple at Leizundian in Wuxi, China who learned the erwu and pipa and who later became blind and earned his living as a wandeering musician. He was then discovered by a musicologist Yang Yin-liu who recorded three of his pipa and three of his erwu pieces. One of those pieces recorded was Reflection of the Moon on Erquan. Since then the piece has been re-arranged many times and was first adapted for the orchestra by Ding Zhi-nuo and He Zhan-hao in 1958, using only a solo violin and a string orhcestra. But the version we heard on Saturday was one done by Henry Shek and was made popular by Seiji Ozawa whilst touring Asia with the Boston Symphony in which a number of passages of the original piece has been cut. No wonder when I heard it, I found only a vague resemblance to solo erwu piece that I previously heard. Only the main melody had been retained. It was a very "strange" listening experience, not entirely erwu, but not entirely Western violin either. It had become a re-written piece in its own right! The sad, lonely and a bit hollow and wistful sound of the erwu with its subtle variation of tone with the tremolo upon its string peculiar to the erwu has almost completely disappeared. It was no longer the same thing. Instead, the sound became more solid and more complex with the addition of the other parts. You got a distinctly Western feel, no longer an entirely Chinese feel rather like a Chinese in long flowing robe with a paper fan in hand being replaced by a man with European facial features and tall strong body in mock Chinese attire!

The highlight of the evening for me was definitely the fabulous Cantonese pianist Chen Jie's performance of the Yellow River Piano Concerto (1969-1970) originally composed in 1939 by Xian Xing-hai, and as re-arranged by the musicians of the Central Philharmonic Orchestra Yin Cheng-zong, Liu Zhuang, Chu Wang-hu, Sheng Li-hong, Shi Shu-cheng and Xu Fei-xing. The piece was originally written in Yen-An, the place where the Communists eventually settled down amongst the hills after the famous Long March which they undertook to escape being annihilated by the pursuing Nationalist armies. The original melody was created as part of a Cantata by Xian who later re-arranged it for the orchestra and then was further re-arranged and adapted into a piano concerto by the above musicians in 4 sections: Prelude, the Song of the Yellow River Boatman, Ode to the Yellow River, The Yellow River in Anger and Defend the Yellow River. The basic themes  remained the same however. This must be one of the most familiar pieces heard by any hi fi lover. Chen appeared in a dramatic red bare back dress with an extremely long trailing shoulder shawl in gold which at one point the conductor stepped on whilst hurrying behind her in acknowledging the audience's applause. What delighted me most was the way she played. Not only does she have power in her hands. She has a most feminine touch in the soft passages, reminding me at times of the play of Joao Maria Pires but not her flow but then we don't want everyone to play the same way! I told my friends that she is my surprise find of the year, a female version of Lang Lang. I meant it not as a denigration of her as a musician. She definitely has a playing style of her own, less flambuoyant than that of Lang Lang perhaps and slightly more restrained but without a doubt more feminine. But at the same time, the way she handles the contrasts between the strong notes and the soft notes and the almost mercurial swiftness with which she can switch from one to the other is to me very Lang Lang. I love her playing style. She received thunderous applauses. She was apparently quite happy too and played an encore Silver Moon on a Calm Lake 銀月平湖 (?) a much lighter and very romantic piece. She played impeccably.

The final programme of the evening was Dvorak's New World Symphony in E minor. This is another very popular piece written during his trip to America in 1893 and needs little introduction. The HKPO under Liu Jia gave an excellent performance, conveying fully its subtler beauty as well as the feeling of broad and endless vistas of the new continent, and the grandeur and openness of its landscape and the quiet and at times the sustained power of Nature as well as various themes taken from folk tales of the blacks and Red Indian (the Hiawatha theme) in pentatonic scale, as well as themes reminiscent of his own native Bohemia by its very synchronized sound under the baton of its Chinese conductor. We know of course that Dvorak is a great collector of folk melodies and hence his interest in the American folk tradition. The concert left me a very happy man indeed! The HKPO did it again! Even as I am writing, the "partials" of Saturday's sounds are still reveberating in my mind's "ears".