Xiaogang YE (b.1955)
Mount E’mei, Op.74 (2015-6) [21:54]
Scent of Green Mango, Op.42 (1998-2014) [17:43]
Lamura Cuo, Op.69b {2014) [13:14]
The Silence of Mount Minshan, Op.73 (2015) [10:48]
Wei Lu, Dan Zhu (violin)
Shengnan Hu (percussion)
Xiaotang Tan (piano)
Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Gilbert Varga
Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz/Stefan Malzew, Franck Ollu
rec. 2018, RSNO Centre/New Auditorium of Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Scotland; 2014/16, Philharmonie, Ludwigshafen, Germany.
NAXOS 8.579087 [63:51]
During the Cultural Revolution Xiaogang Ye, like so many of his contemporaries, was sent to work in the countryside and, subsequently, in a factory. After the Cultural Revolution he was accepted into the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing where he studied composition with Du Mingxin. He also studied with British composer Alexander Goehr and with Samuel Adler, Joseph Schwantner, and Louis Andriessen at the Eastman School of Music in New York. He returned to China in 1994 and taught in the composition faculty at the Central Conservatory where, until 2018, he also served as one of four vice-presidents. Consequently, while so many of his peers took their Chinese musical roots and developed them overseas, he remained staunchly rooted in China, and his music has little of the adventurousness, the experimental feel, or the multi-culturalism of others of his generation. Reading his biography, you might well get the impression that he is the Establishment Voice of Chinese symphonic music; a notion supported by his roles as a standing member of the 13th Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, and as Chairman of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles.
As we might expect, his music is extremely colourful, combining a range of Chinese traditional instruments and musical devices with a broad-sweeping romantic orchestral palette strongly influenced by Chinese landscapes and imagery. Mount E’mei is a fine example, opening with haunting marimba notes, shimmering strings, and an eloquent, if strongly virtuosic, violin solo (the violin soloist here being Wei Lu). Vast landscapes are conveyed through orchestral colour, often underpinned by rumbling percussion, and as a kind of double concerto for violin and solo percussionist, it is full of dramatic episodes and evocative passages. Gilbert Varga directs the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in this lavishly scored and, at times, visionary work which, according to the booklet notes, “describes and eulogises” Mount E’mei in Sichuan province, which is “an important birthplace of Chinese civilization”. While the music certainly evokes grandeur, magnificence, spiritual depth, and a certain mysticism (the importance of the place in Buddhism is indicated by the clanging of temple bells), Ye’s writing is powerful enough in its own right for the music to shine through on its own terms. I find this a very attractive and absorbing work, especially given this excellent performance and splendid recorded sound.
The other three works on the disc were recorded some years earlier in Germany by the Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz. All three of them evoke some aspect of China, either topographical (Lamura Cuo is one of a series of works about the Nine Sacred Lakes in Tibet, while The Silence of Mount Minshan was inspired by another Sichuan mountain), or vegetative (Scent of Green Mango is one of a series of pieces names after Asian tropical plants).
Scent of Green Mango is a concertante work for piano and orchestra, recorded in 2014 with Franck Ollu as conductor. The recording feels a little cramped, with the piano dominating in the crashing, tumultuous opening, where Ye seems to be throwing everything at the listener. It never really settles down, maintaining a tireless momentum and with the orchestra and piano constantly chafing at the bit. At times we get tiny wafts of Ravel and Poulenc, but of the four works on the disc, this is the most aggressive, yet it is undeniably colourful and full of drama. I have smelt a good few green mangos in my time (we used to have a mango tree in our garden until the termites got to it) and have to say the relevance of the title to the music eludes me; it sounds more like an energetic and barely restrained workout, the music rushing from one piece of exercise equipment to another with never a chance to brush the sweat from its brow. However, I read from the booklet note that it conveys the “complexity of the heart of a musician of southern Chinese origin”. Make of that what you will.
Another concertante work, this time with the violin as the chief protagonist, is Lamura Cuo, recorded, as was The Silence of Mount Minshan, in 2016 under Stefan Malzew. Dan Zhu is the soloist on this performance and exudes calm and mystery as the violin soars lyrically above the orchestra in a musical image of the eponymous lake, which sits, dark and quiet, surrounded by the clouds and desolation on the highest plateau in the world. Ye writes in his notes how the place stirs up “deep emotions within the composer”, but the emotional depth of the work is largely overshadowed by the rich expansiveness of the writing and by Zhu’s opulent tone.
Scored for string orchestra, The Silence of Mount Minshan attempts to portray the mountain as it stands covered in frost and snow. Ye evokes a sense of shivering cold through shimmering strings, and the German players produce an appropriately brittle sound, to create a vivid picture of frost and ice. Written at much the same time as Mount E’mei, this, too, is a very attractive and picturesque work which, on the one level, draws a fine picture of a certain topographical feature, but on another conveys some sense of the place’s importance in the history of Shu civilization.
Marc Rochester
