Fu-Tong Wong is a Cantonese composer currently living in Taiwan.
Initially self-taught, he emigrated to New York in the 1970s
to help in his brother's noodle business in Chinatown, but was
able to take a university degree in music from 1975. Since then
he has published books on music theory and violin practice,
taught and studied further, and written a fair amount of music,
although even as late as 1990 he was still working in his brother's
concern.
This CD, released on Wong's own label, is a step towards realising,
in his daughter's words, "his dream of uniting the best
of classical Western and Eastern music". It contains all
of Wong's music to date for solo violin with, in all but one
case, piano. The disc is not widely available as such, but on
emusic.com can be had at the 'superbudget' price (under £5.99),
with individual tracks even cheaper. For a CD which is crammed
with gorgeous Far Eastern melodies but fundamentally Western
harmonies, instruments and techniques that is all but guaranteed
to appeal to almost any music-lover, that represents an absolute
bargain.
The Xi Shi Fantasy is based on Wong's only opera
so far, Xi Shi. It consists of four distinct sections, recounting
the love woes of the eponymous heroine, one of the apocryphal
Four Beauties of Ancient China whose loveliness had a tendency
to bring ruin upon kingdoms. Wong considers this piece, which
was premiered in its original orchestral version in 1993 at
the famous Musikverein in Vienna, one of his signature works,
and in it he has attempted to "embody the qualities of
Bach's music and Chinese opera" - a curious notion, perhaps,
but one in keeping with Wong's belief that Bach is "the
founder of all compositions", as he writes in his 2004
book Theory on Music, and his aim to combine Eastern
and Western ideas in his music. Aptly, this virtuosic work has
plenty of drama, but also lyrical pastoralism, dance and rhapsodic
beauty.
The oddly-titled Variations on the Theme of Anping Ballade
is Wong's only work so far for solo violin. It is a
programmatic piece, telling the story of a girl whose spends
her life waiting in vain at the Taiwanese port of Anping for
her love to return from sea. Wong's music is suitably longing
in mood, albeit more touchingly wistful than gloomy, and with
a glimmer of hope cruelly dashed in the middle. Cho-Liang Lin's
violin, well-known in the West both on disc and in the concert
hall, is marvellously delicate here, and as immaculate and heartfelt
as it is throughout the recital. Wong has written that "there
is no good composition without good performance", and in
Lin and Evelyn Chen's hands he is already halfway to winning
audiences over.
Hoyahue is a popular Taiwanese song written by composer
Yuxian Deng (1906-1944), sometimes known as the "father
of Taiwanese pop music", and whose Spring Song some
may know from a couple of Lang Lang's CDs. According to the
liner notes, Hoyahue means "a flower in the rain
and darkness" and symbolises "the hardship of the
Taiwanese people." Wong's Variations on this
lovely theme alternate key and mood to reflect the joys and
struggles of the Taiwanese.
The two sprightly Chinese Dances are similar in
character, although the second interweaves a further, more melancholic
motif, telling as it does the story of a captive Uighur girl
whose dancing eventually sets her spirit free in the sanguine
ending.
Wong wrote the Dream of my Motherland Suite
in 1976, before he had had any formal training in composition,
"to fill his nostalgic heart with music". There are
five short sections, the yearning, beautiful 'South of the Yangtze
River', 'Sheng Dance', a knees-up round a bonfire with the ethnic
mouth organ, 'Remembrance', in which Wong "wants to greet
his loved ones from across the ocean through his music",
the cantering 'Song of the Horse Wagon', and 'Hand Drum Dance',
a lively jig from northwestern China sounding uncannily British.
Finally, the four arrangements of Chinese Folk Songs:
'Mongolian Folk Song', a simple but evocative piece depicting
the vast landscape and arduous life of the nomads, the fleeting
but perky and tricky 'Drum Dance', the atmospheric 'Tibetan
Love Song', and the 'Ali Mountain Song', a medley of idiomatic
tunes which Wong initially thought a Taiwanese folksong, but
which turned out to be an original piece by Taiwanese film director
Che Zhang.
Sound quality is very high. The CD booklet is informative, although
all the more so for those who can read Chinese!
Byzantion
Collected reviews and contact at reviews.gramma.co.uk
Cho-Liang Lin (violin) 
