The New Year is always celebrated with pleasant music. Like the Viennese playing waltzes for the famous Golden Hall New Year's Concert, the Shanghai Traditional Music Orchestra will play a concert of traditional Chinese music to welcome the Chinese New Year on February 2."Compared with our two Spring Festival concerts in the Golden Hall in Vienna in 2001 and 2003, the upcoming concert will present a more refined repertoire featuring easy-to-understand, pleasant Chinese music of all kinds," says composer and conductor Wang Fujian, head of the orchestra.
The concert will open with a jubilant piece - "Chinese Orchestral Music Spring Festival Overture."
"I haven't found any better Chinese compositions themed in Spring Festival," says Wang. "The piece describes a scene in North China in which people celebrate the Spring Festival by making dumplings together."
Then the "Paidi (Chinese pan flute) Solo Boat Song of the Water Region" in a different style will take the audience to watery, scenic South China.
This soothing piece will be followed by Tan Dun's wild and powerful "Chinese Orchestral Music of the Northwest Suite II, IV." Chinese composer Tan won an Oscar for his soundtrack for the movie "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."
The centerpiece of the concert will be the performance by China's top erhu (a two-stringed instrument) player Min Huifen, who will play "Erhu Concerto, The Great Wall Capriccio III, IV" with the orchestra.
Min was the first musician to play the ancient instrument to worldwide acclaim. In 1977 her performance of the Chinese folk piece "Jiang He Shui" ("Wailing Water") brought Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa, then the chief conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, to tears. Ozawa called Min "one of the best string performers in the world" and said her performance had so successfully portrayed the pain and suffering of mankind that it allowed the audience to share its intense sorrow.
Today Min is not only famous for her outstanding musical skills, but also for her personal experience that is so close to the "Wailing Water" music.
At the peak of her career in 1981, she was diagnosed with malignant melanoma, a serious skin cancer. Her illness kept her from the stage, but did not stop her from studying composition at the local conservatory. Min miraculously returned to the stage in 1987 after six operations.
The orchestra will also play a rainbow of cheerful music, including the female vocal solo "Qinghai-Tibet Plateau"; the duo vocal "Happy Days" for suona (oboe) and Chinese orchestra; "A Hundred Birds Worship the Phoenix" for percussion and orchestra; "Flying Dragon and Jumping Tiger" and traditional Cantonese Spring Festival music.
The concert will present one of Wang's newest creations, "Song of Joy Jiangnan Winds and Strings."
Date: February 2, 7:30pm
Address: Shanghai Concert Hall, 523 Yan'an Rd E.
Tickets: 80-380 yuan
Tel: 021-6217-2426
