The fiddlers - Part II

Siu Pak Yung was featured on the second night. He played a total of three works by Liu Tian Hua - two as part of the planned program and one for the encore - all requiring a certain intensity from the performer. Siu gave himself more latitude for expression by choosing pieces that were more pensive and emotionally tense. There were some idiosyncracies in his technique, but these don't matter much to me. Compared to the pieces Min played last night, I can more easily relate to those Siu had chosen.

The orchestral works Gu Huai Xun Gen and Execution in Fall were most fascinating. Having already heard both of them the night before, I became more acquainted with them on second hearing.

A troubling chord played by the strings starts off Gu Huai Xun Gen, composed by Zhao Jiping. He is known more for the soundtracks he had composed for films, most notably Raise the Red Lantern, To Live, and Farewell My Concubine. The introduction was reminisence of the opening of Sibelius' Swans of Tuolena - full of uncertainty and mystique. The first movement, played entirely by the string section, had the quality of an adagio movement in a string quartet. I wouldn't be surprised if it was part of a movie soundtrack. The exuberant second movement depicted the return to one's homeland. Most of the fanfare centered around a second theme (which I'd also jotted in my notebook), and was carried through till the end of the movement by the wind section. The surreal never-ending cycles of celebration had to end somewhere. The inevitability of which was unfortunately confirmed when the same chord heard at the start of this piece rose like a pall of darkness over the now distant fanfare melody. And then it's back to the brooding heard in the first movement. The fanfare theme, played once by the flutes, gave a quiet reminder of the bygone days before the music draws to an end.

The other orchestral work Execution in Fall, also played on both nights, was composed by Lin Yue Pei who was in the audience. The conductor paid personal tribute to the maestro, who recently celebrated his 80th birthday. The work is based on a drama set in dynastic Chinese periods. The drama tells the story of a lady wrongly sentenced to death for allegedly poisoning her father-in-law. Traditional Chinese operatic devices and idioms were used alongside harsh dissonant chords and irregular rhythms such as 7-time and 9-time. The court calls and the maiden's cries, verbalized by the suona and leiqin, tickled the audience. The orchestra sound was pared down, often in the more introspective sections, to just that of a few different instruments played by the section principals. I remembered these as the most haunting, alarming and distressing moments.

I wonder if it would be easy to find recordings of the two works. I'd really like to have them on my playlist. Oh... this is totally random, but I can't explain why I'm reminded of Messiaen's Turangulila Symphonie after listening to Execution in Fall.

It was a good weekend :)