POETIC SPIRIT
Composer Shi Fuhong is set to showcase five chamber music works at the Central Conservatory of Music, where she first studied and now teaches. Chen Nan reports.
Chinese composer Shi Fuhong’s work, The Mountain Spirit, will make its debut in Padova, Italy, on March 8. During the concert, which is to celebrate International Women’s Day, the piece will be performed by one of the most popular Italian chamber orchestras, I Solisti Veneti, under the baton of conductor and orchestra founder, maestro Claudio Scimone.
Shi’s work, The Mountain Spirit, stood out among hundreds of works shortlisted by the Adkins Chiti Foundation, a nonprofit organization which was founded in 1978 and is dedicated to supporting young composers worldwide.
The concert will also premiere five other works by female composers from countries including the United States, Italy, Greece and Australia.
The Mountain Spirit, written for mandolin and string orchestra, was inspired by the poetry anthology, Nine Songs, by Qu Yuan, a famous Chinese poet and minister who lived during the Warring States Period (475-221 BC). The poem of The Mountain Spirit follows the monologue of a female spirit living in the mountains, who is pure, simple and loyal to her love.
“The work is dedicated to women and it also attempts to symbolize that waiting is an eternal theme for people,” says Shi, 42, during an interview in Beijing.
The upcoming performance of Shi’s The Mountain Spirit is based on her work of the same name first written for Canadian soprano Shannon Mercer and the Soundstreams Chamber Orchestra in 2012.
On March 23, the composer will showcase five of her chamber music works, performed on both Chinese and Western instruments, at a recital to be held at the concert hall of Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music.
The repertoire will include Return, featuring three singers from the Dong ethnic group, as well as Mountains and Seas and Fantasy of the Journey.
The five works to be performed, Shi says, were composed after she started teaching at the Central Conservatory of Music in 2009, where she is now an associate professor and graduate student supervisor of the composition department.
Shi, who was born in Shenyang in Northeast China’s Liaoning province, was introduced to music by her father, a tenor.
She grew up being surrounded by music thanks to her father, an avid music fan who enjoys classical music and Peking Opera.
Shi started playing piano at the age of 6, and later obtained a bachelor’s degree in composition from the Central Conservatory of Music.
For the composer, composition is an abstract, emotional and personal process.
In 1997, she composed a piece, titled Sheng Sheng Man, for piano and soprano, which was based on a work by the female Song Dynasty (960-1279) poet, Li Qingzhao of the same title.
“I composed the piece when I read the poem and was touched by the lines which portray the sorrow and loneliness of the poet’s late years,” says Shi.
The poem reminded Shi of her grandmother, with whom she grew up, who died of cancer at the age of 67. Shi’s grandmother, the composer says, was “a strong and independent” woman, who raised her two sons alone after her divorce.
“I remember visiting my grandmother on one occasion and seeing her sitting alone in the sunset. Her shadow on the wall was so beautiful, I will never forget it,” Shi says.
“When I composed Sheng Sheng Man, I portrayed that scene with my music.”
Shi, who spent six years further pursuing her studies in Canada, received her master’s degree from the University of Victoria in 2005 and gained a doctorate from the University of Toronto in 2009.
Then, after winning the Young Composers Project in the China National Arts Fund competition in 2015, she went on to become a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York until February 2017.
The composer says she has spent a long time thinking about the connection between composing and her Chinese roots.
“I was inspired a lot by traditional Chinese poetry and folk stories. And while I was studying in Canada, I was open and interested in fusing the aesthetics of Chinese music, literature and art with the compositional techniques of Western music,” says Shi.
One of her works, Distance, which was scored for a mixed ensemble of traditional Chinese and Western instruments, and premiered in Toronto in 2013, will also be part of the concert on March 23.
Describing it, Shi says, “Distance does not only mean time and space, but also signifies the ability to reconsider and rediscover the roots of language and culture”.
Speaking about Shi’s works, Lawrence Cherney, artistic director of the Toronto music presenter, Soundstreams, says, “Shi Fuhong bridges the gap between the East and the West.
“She can speak in two different languages at the same time using contemporary vocabularies.”