SUPPORT YOUR SYMPHONY

Douglas F. King Assistant Conductor Sunny Xia will be at the podium for Celebrate Asia's 15th annual edition (January 29). Photo by Carlin Ma.

Li Huanzhi was born in Hong Kong in 1919 to a Taiwanese mother and a father whose ancestors came from Quanzhou in the Fujian Province. He studied at the National Music College in Shanghai and later at Lu Xun Arts College in Shaanxi Province, and went on to compose a vast collection of over 400 pieces. The Spring Festival Overture, one of his most famous and treasured works, honors the Lunar New Year and depicts celebrations in the Shanbei region in northwest China where Li lived for many years. Written between 1955–56, the overture incorporates elements of Western harmonies with a distinctly Chinese classical-music style.  

The work opens with a high-spirited and rhythmic dance tune that lands the listener in the middle of the festive activities. In the expressive middle section, the oboe introduces a folk tune from North Shaanxi that was used as a dance to celebrate the growth of seedlings and offer prayers for good luck and peace in the New Year. The strings take up the melody with sweeping lyricism before the original tune returns with energetic vibrancy.  

Apart from several years spent in a re-education camp during the Cultural Revolution, Li enjoyed a prolific career that spanned decades. His Spring Festival Overture broke boundaries in 2007 when it was chosen as one of 30 musical selections to be sent to outer space aboard China’s first lunar-probe satellite, Chang’e No. 1, where the joyful music was beamed back to earth. 

The Butterfly Lovers Concerto was written as a collaboration between violinist He Zhan-Hao and composer Chen Gang while they were students at the Shanghai Conservatory in the late 1950s. Both musicians were interested in exploring ways of uniting traditional Chinese music with Western techniques. The resulting violin concerto became a huge hit, its popularity reaching beyond the classical music world with themes that are easily recognized within Chinese culture. 

Inspiration for the piece came from the Chinese folk legend of the Butterfly Lovers. Much like Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the story portrays star-crossed lovers, Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai. Zhu has convinced her family to let her attend school, but to do so she must dress as a man. There, she meets Liang and falls in love but is forced to return home and enter an arranged marriage. Liang, realizing her true identity, is devastated. He grows ill and dies; before her marriage, Zhu visits Liang’s grave and throws herself in it. United in death, the lovers transform into butterflies and fly away together.  

He and Chen draw on Chinese opera traditions, especially the expressive sliding notes heard in the violin and the rich tambors of a full orchestra, to tell the tale of these tragic lovers. The work was silenced during the Cultural Revolution and dismissed as bourgeois. After being rediscovered by a new generation of violinists in the 1970s, it is now firmly established as an endearing classic of the violin literature.  

Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky led a tumultuous life marked by periods of nervous exhaustion and melancholy. He showed early signs of musical talent, but a lack of public music education kept him from pursuing a career in the arts. When the Saint Petersburg Conservatory was founded in 1862, Tchaikovsky enrolled and received training in the Western European classical canon. This set him apart from the group of Russian nationalist composers, including Mily Balakirev, who aimed to create a distinctly Russian style of music. Tchaikovsky eventually forged his own approach that pulled from both traditions, creating a voice that was intensely personal and unmistakably Russian.  

Despite Tchaikovsky’s differing views, Balakirev supported his career and suggested he write an overture based on Shakespeare’s play, Romeo and Juliet, going so far as to propose key signatures and thematic ideas. Tchaikovsky willingly took the advice, sharing his progress with Balakirev and eventually dedicating the work to him. The overture underwent multiple revisions; the final and most often performed version was completed 10 years after the first draft. The Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture begins with a chant-like chorale and upward-reaching phrases that suggest innocent hope. After an Allegro section that illustrates the tensions between the warring families, the violas and English horn begin the famous love theme that is developed into a rapturous melody by the strings. The drama returns, full of emotional struggle, and ends with a bleak timpani roll marking the young couple’s tragic ending. Solemn funeral music concludes the overture and the phrases that once reached upward in hope are now suffused with poignant loss. 

Spanish music and culture became very popular in 19th-century Russia after the composer Mikhail Glinka spent two years in Spain, writing music inspired by the folksongs and rhythms he heard on his travels. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov was deeply influenced by Glinka — both shared the ideology of composing in a distinctly national style — so it is no surprise that he turned to Spain for the themes of his orchestral showpiece, Capriccio espagnol. Rimsky-Korsakov wrote the piece in 1887, using ideas from an earlier work for violin and orchestra that had remained unfinished. The virtuosic violin solos sprinkled throughout the work soon evolved into a series of dazzling solos for every instrument, becoming a tour de force for musicians and, as Tchaikovsky noted with praise, “a colossal masterpiece in instrumentation.” 

In five short movements, Rimsky-Korsakov paints vivid scenes of Spanish dances and melodies, beginning with the Alborada, or “morning serenade.” The energetic and spirited music is based on a traditional tune from Asturias. A more mellow set of variations follows the initial outburst, with beautiful solos in the horns providing a pastoral sense of peace. The melody is passed through the orchestra, highlighting the English horn and a rapturous violin section before concluding with an intriguing chromatic flute solo. The Alborada music jumps back into action for a brief interlude before the snare drum and trumpets introduce the next scene, setting the stage for a parade of solo cadenzas. A whirlwind fandango closes the work, complete with castanets and an exhilarating acceleration to the finish line.  

Catherine Case © 2022