China Daily Global Edition (USA)
IN THE NAME OF CULTURE
The Shanghai Chinese Orchestra will begin a tour of Europe starting on Chinese New Year’s Day, performing eight concerts in Britain, France, Belgium and Germany from Feb 16 to 23.
According to Luo Xiaoci, director of the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra, the 70-piece orchestra will hold a concert titled New Oriental at some of the most acclaimed concert halls in the world and it will be the first time traditional Chinese music is performed at the Paris Philharmonic Hall and the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg.
The objective of the concert, Luo said, is to share with the world the rich history, aesthetics and philosophical ideas of Chinese culture through folk music.
“We will present our long history, as well as its diversity, tolerance and innovation. I believe the openness, elegance and confidence reflected in our performance will win the recognition of audiences from different cultural backgrounds,” she said.
The formation of a musical group featuring traditional Chinese instruments only took place in Shanghai in the 1920s when a band was formed under the banner of Datong Music Society. The Shanghai Chinese Orchestra, which was later founded in 1952, was the first of its kind in the new China. Luo said that the orchestra has since been a pioneer in the modernization of traditional music.
It was Peng Xiuwen (1931-1996) who designed the layout of the Chinese music orchestra. Even today, the structure he created is still widely adopted by Chinese orchestras all over the world, such as those in Singapore and Malaysia. It was also Peng who started the reform of traditional Chinese instruments in order to expand the range and enhance the sound quality.
The New Oriental concert production was created for the opening of the 18th China Shanghai International Arts Festival in 2016 and has been wellreceived and widely toured in China. In June 2017, the concert made its overseas premiere in Piraeus, Greece, in celebration of the 45th anniversary of Sino-Greece diplomatic relations. During this concert, audience will get to hear tunes from an ancient flute made of a bone that dates back 8,000 years. Compositions by contemporary Chinese musicians Zhao Jiping, Tan Dun and Liu Changyuan will also be performed.
“We have constantly explored the new possibilities of Chinese music,” Luo said.
“We know there were big orchestras comprising 100 people 1,000 years ago, but we know nothing about how they were structured and performed. As such, we have to create new forms and acoustic presentations of Chinese music relevant to this age we are in.”
In order to do so, Luo has hired Western musicians to compose musical works for the orchestra. Last year, the orchestra premiered a new production Shanghai Odyssey — The Bund during the China Shanghai International Arts Festival. The piece was created by German artist Christian Jost.
According to Luo, Chinese music is very much linear and emphasizes the flow of the melody. She added that Jost, being a European musician, “has the natural endowment for the harmony and balance in music” and helped the orchestra achieve “a graceful elegance that is rare and precious in traditional Chinese music performance”.
The orchestra is also constantly commissioning new pieces from young composers, creating smallscale concert productions and performing for young audiences. Later this year from April 15 to June 3, the orchestra will present a series of eight salon concerts at Sinan Mansions in Shanghai, and each performance will be accompanied by the presentation of traditional Chinese culture and crafts such as tea, incense, poetry and opera. The featured musicians will play their most celebrated repertoire, explain the acoustic characteristic of their instruments, and talk about music history and composition.
Located in the heart of the former French Concession, Sinan Mansions is a cluster of vintage buildings dating back to the early 1900s. Besides being home to a variety of fine dining and lifestyle establishments, there is also a space for art and culture where book readings regularly take place.
Yu Haihong, spokesperson of the Huangpu district administration, expressed hope that the music salons at Sinan Mansions will help to raise awareness of the beauty of Chinese art and culture. These salons will be free to the public and visitors can make online appointments via Sinan Mansions’ WeChat platform.
One of the musicians scheduled to perform at these salons is Luo, an award-winning musician who plays the guzheng, a pluck string instrument with 2,000 years of history. Luo started to play the guzheng when she was just 7 years old, and she was so adept at it that she later enrolled in the middle school associated to the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Despite her talent for the musical instrument, she was actually not too fond of playing it.
“I didn’t work hard, and was often distracted. I used to love pop hits, and was for a while fascinated with percussion music,” she quipped.
“Playing the guzheng was so boring and exhausting,” she said. “There was a traditional piece titled Autumn Moon in the Han Palace that was particularly traumatizing. The music depicted an aging woman’s solitude in a closed palace. But I was just a teenager, I could not understand such emotions.”
Luo said that it was only after she went to college that she started to feel “enlightened”. She soon developed a passion for the performing style of the north, which is more intense than the lyrical style of the south.
One of her earliest compositions is Mo Xi (Dance of the Ink), which was created in 2006. In the piece, she presents the beauty and rhythm of different calligraphy styles.
“For one part it is safe and square, and for the next, it goes a bit tipsy as if the writer is slightly drunk,” she said.
“I have always loved calligraphy and have practiced it for decades. Chinese music is similar to calligraphy — it has its own unique aesthetics.”