Two CDs of Chinese
socialist classical music heavily indebted
in most cases to Soviet templates. Each
disc concludes with a selection of folksy
arrangements for violin and piano.
The Butterfly
Lovers concerto is rather like
the Bruch Scottish Fantasia, the
Ravel Tzigane and The Lark
Ascending relocated to China. It
is sentimental, honey-sweet with the
solo violin notably in dialogue with
the harp. Along the way there are moments
of headlong virtuosity and overblown
majesty (21.28) all in a style that
suggests that the work could have been
written between 1890 and 1910. It is
in one continuous half hour movement
and makes extensive use of a peacefully
flowing theme from the traditional opera
Yue Ju. The storyline is of the
tragic lovers Liang and Zhu. Zhu throws
herself on her lover's tomb and falls
in. Two butterflies emerge and rise
to eternal love suggested by harp, flute
and singing violins.
This sugary pictorialism
gives way to the thunderous turbulence
of the Yellow River Concerto arranged
from the cantata by Xinghai (a pupil
of Dukas in Paris) powerfully exhorting
resistance to the Japanese invader.
The Yellow River second movement
derives from a tenor solo in the cantata
while the Ballad (III) is taken
from a female chorus. The Ballad
starts with some extremely atmospheric
writing for flute followed by arabesque-laden
music for the piano. The final movement
is called Defending the Yellow River
where the people are exhorted to
resist the insurgents. After some hortatory
flourishes straight from the Grieg concerto
a jaunty kitschy tune hops and skips
along before ending the work in exultant
anthem style. Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky
are the no-holds-barred exemplars. The
solo part is taken with complete commitment
by Yin Chengzong.
The Five Taiwan
folk songs are for piano and
violin. They are honeyed, pastoral,
virtuosic (including a wild equivalent
of Hejre Kati) and dancing halfway
between Bartók and Liszt. Baodi
and his anonymous pianist fill out the
second disc with some gluey sentimental
solos - no worse or better than many
another confection perpetrated in Europe
in the 19th century. The quasi-Dervish
dance sounds positively Russian. This
is no surprise as many of the Chinese
composers were trained in Russia or
by teachers who had been educated in
Moscow and elsewhere in the USSR.
The four movement Feng
suite has a Yi locale. This is pristine
and may occasionally make us think of
Malcolm Arnold's boozy Beckus.
It is an atmospheric piece worthy, like
the Kazak suite of much
wider currency though it is not desperately
original. Feng is said to have added
local colour with a mouth organ, wind
pipes and flute.
The four movement Fantasia
is flighty and bombastic (Copland
and even Gliere), vibrant (Khachaturyan)
and poetic. It again celebrates the
Yi people of Yunnan. Contrast this with
the Kazak Suite which
is in four movements the first of which
is almost bluesy with a quite different
edge to the other music in this set.
It is closer to Borodin, Ippolitov-Ivanov
and Khachaturyan. The brazen solo trumpet
has a Mexican sierra 'heat'. This suite
is well worth getting to know and if
you like the Polovtsi style then this
is certainly for you. A pity that this
session shows the strings of the orchestra
at their most scrawny. They are perfectly
adequate elsewhere.
The notes do not tell
us enough about the composers and committees
involved but that aside this is a rambunctious,
cheeky, flighty, sometimes overdone,
sometimes treacly anthology. Approach
with your taste setting at its least
exalted level and especially in the
case of the Butterfly Lovers and
the pieces by Yilin and Feng you will
find much to enjoy. Such a pity though
that my own favourite (the ballet The
Red Detachment of Women) is not included.
If you liked Arnold's Concerto for
Phyllis and Cyril or the Beatles
Piano Concerto or the Hekel Tavares
Concerto in Brazilian Forms (on
Brana Records) then this is a surefire
winner … otherwise fasten your seatbelts!
Rob Barnett
Symphony Orchestra of the Central Philharmonic
Society of China 