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Bright
SHENG (b.1952)
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Sharon Bezaly flute (Flute Moon)
Singapore Symphony Orchestra conducted by Lan Shui
BIS-CD-1052
[72:33] full-price
by William Beh
Having
attended the concerts which preceded these recordings (Flute Moon
was performed on Jan 22, 2000 
),
I can still remember distinctly, on the occasion, being overdosed and
underwhelmed on the musical language of Bright Sheng. Listening to it
again, after six months, it doesn't seem to sound as underwrought
as one recalls. More importantly, this recording might just be the foothold
by which Sheng's music can receive some serious critical assessment.
Bright
Sheng comes from the generation of Chinese-American artists who lived
through and survived the Cultural Revolution. Today, they form an active
company of composers (including Tan Dun, Chen Yi and Zhou Long) who draw
upon both Western and Oriental influences in a fusion of styles, while
constantly struggling to refine their craft and pushing back, in so many
ways, their boundaries of expression. In their own way, they are a barometric
indication of modern compositional tastes and styles.
That said,
the Singapore Symphony Orchestra is surprisingly conversant with Sheng's
unique musical stylings, having had a long association with his music.
The relationship goes back as far as 5 August 1994 when they gave the
world premiere of Fanfare, then-subtitled Arrows to the Page.
This short oeuvre was later included as the second movement of
China Dreams, for which the SSO gave the Asian premiere on 12 September
1997 .
More recently,
in March 1999, before a standing-room-only audience, Yo-Yo Ma performed
Two Poems ,
a two-movement cello concerto on which Flute Moon was modelled.
All the three works on this disc receive their world premiere recordings.
Bright Sheng (Sheng Zong Liang) - The Man and the Music"I was born in Shanghai but at the age of 15, I was sent to Qinghai to be a farmer. During the Cultural Revolution, everybody either became a farmer or labourer and because my grandfather was branded 'an enemy of the State', I was sent to as far away from the big cities as one could get. There was only one way out - if you were talented as a musician, you could survive - and fortunately I was a good pianist. "Qinghai is northeast of Tibet (Xizhang). Being part of the Silk Road, Qinghai is a melting pot of many different cultures - Tibetans, Mongolians, Chinese and Muslims all lived together. Postcards has a movement with a Qinghai folksong Hua-er (Little Flower) inspired by the flower festival held on the sixth day of the sixth month of the lunar calendar. "My parents were tortured and my grandparents were driven to suicide. I thus have no good feelings for the Cultural Revolution or Communism or any form of dictatorship. As a creative artist, my experience of this difficult period became a form of therapy, an emotional and spiritual catharsis that has been absorbed into my work. "After the Cultural Revolution, I was among the first batch of students accepted by the Shanghai Conservatory when it reopened. In 1982, I migrated to America and studied in Queen's College and later Columbia University. I provided for myself by teaching the piano, working as a busboy and orderly in a nursing home... "My student works are best left unpublished. The first major composition was H'un: In Memoriam 1966-1976, a dissonant work about the Cultural Revolution, which was played by many US orchestras. Then came a period of homesickness which saw Chinese folk music and the pentatonic scale being used frequently in my music. My concerto for orchestra China Dreams as does Postcards, come from this period. The flute concerto of 1999, Flute Moon marks a stylistic change in direction - it's not so pentatonic but still Chinese in feeling and character. Extracts
from an interview with Bright Sheng |
The unmistakably reverberant quality of the Victoria Concert Hall right from the opening bars may prove to be difficult - until one gets used to it (eventually). Consider yourself warned.
Flute Moon begins with an acerbic flourish from the doublebasses and progresses into a great deal of corpulent orchestral pungency. By his own admission, Sheng has said that these works are "very difficult"; intellectually, interpreting this would be even more difficult on the part of Lan Shui, the conductor.
The first movement depicts a dance between a mixed pair of giant Chinese unicorns - Qi being the male, taken by the orchestra and Lin, the female, taken by the piccolo solo - and receives a threatening, visceral performance from all parties concerned.
The eponymous second movement, based on a song by Sung Dynasty poet Jiang Kui (1155 - 1235 ?), is no less taut and daring in its reading by Shui Lan and the Israeli soloist, Sharon Bezaly. This is a wonderful avantgardist showcase for a young orchestra (and soloist), and should leave more listeners than not quite impressed.
China Dreams is in all but name a tour de force concerto for orchestra. The musicians play extremely well under Lan, with a great deal of empathy for the music, whether in the chattering polyphony of Fanfare, or complex rhythmic harmonies of The Stream Flows.
The Three Gorges of the Long River is an imaginative piece that portrays the grandeur of the Long River (the Yangtze, which has its source in the province of Qinghai); it is slightly less ebullient than the preceding sections, but Lan nevertheless revels in the music's atmosphere. The percussion is first-class, as are the strings.
Postcards is a collection of four short movements, each written in a specific folk-song style characteristic of a different geographical region of China, a piece about nature, love and nostalgia. This isn't exactly Smetana's Ma Vlast or Ippolitov-Ivanov's Caucasian Sketches - they did not, as Sheng does here, subtitle one of their movements Wish You Were Here (!) - but nonetheless, Postcards too was written and here receives a performance with a lot of character.
Two slow movements From the Mountains and Wish You Were Here bookend the two central fist-shakers From the River Valley and From the Savage Land. The imagery as phrases surface from the dark swell of orchestral texture is as palpable as it is evocative - again, the orchestra acquits themselves with much distinction, playing with much virtuosity. The ambience of the recording adds a softer, sadder edge than Sheng might have otherwise intended, but this is not necessarily a bad thing.
This disc comes in just under sixty minutes (with Postcards taking on the role of quasi-filler) and the album cover, as usual, can serve as an interesting conversation topic when all else fails. Surprisingly, though, the old SSO logo still appears on the packaging: carelessness or negligence? One only wonders.
This is a stylistically credible performance, the orchestra coming out with all guns blazing. Shui Lan, himself a Chinese-American émigré, is totally at one with Sheng's music, even if at this point, Sheng is still clearly exploring new directions and inspirations. Fans of this genre need not hesitate, and newcomers might find the plunge a rewarding experience.
You can buy or order this CD in Singapore from
HMV or Borders (Wheelock Place), as well as at Victoria Concert Hall during
SSO concert occasions.
William
Beh is waiting for someone to offer odds on
how much longer the old SSO logo will appear on future BIS CDs.
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