Renowned French violinist Augustin Dumay is playing a world-famous piece of Chinese music with an orchestra composed of players from China and Europe. Dumay calls the experience "a culture wedding."

And the wedding will be staged at the Forbidden City Concert Hall on Sunday as part of the Ninth Beijing Music Festival.

The Chinese music is the violin concerto "The Butterfly Lovers" scored by Chinese composers Chen Gang and He Zhanhao in 1959.

It is based on the Romeo and Juliet-like tragedy set in ancient China. Because of their opposing backgrounds, the two lovers are forbidden to marry, so they kill themselves and turn into butterflies.

The violin concerto is one of the most famous pieces of contemporary Chinese music in the world and many Chinese violinists have performed it on the world stage. However, very few foreign violinists have played it. Japanese violinist Takako Nishzaki is one of the few.

When the French violinist Dumay was invited by Yu Long, artistic director and chief conductor of Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra, to tour with the orchestra in the United States and Japan last September and October, Dumay played the touching concerto, upon Yu's suggestion, at the Carnegie Hall, Boston Symphony Hall, Tokyo Opera City Hall and Osaka Symphony Hall.

Dumay returns to Beijing with the piece, still under the baton of Yu. The only change is the orchestra, which is made up of the China Philharmonic Orchestra and Dumay's Royal Chamber Orchestra of Wallonia.

"One of the important missions of today's Chinese musicians, including me, is to introduce more Chinese music to the world," Yu explained. "It is one way that Chinese musicians play Chinese music on the world stage, the other efficient way is to let the influential foreign musicians play our music."

"Through the collaboration with Dumay in the past few years, we have become very good friends. I appreciate his music and very much look forward to Sunday's concert," added Yu, the 40-year-old ambitious and energetic conductor, who serves at the same time the artistic directors of China Philharmonic Orchestra, Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra and Beijing Music Festival.

There is also something special between Yu and "The Butterfly Lovers." His grandfather, the late composer Ding Shande, was the president of Shanghai Conservatory of Music and supervised Chen and He (faculty member of Shanghai Conservatory of Music) who finished the piece in 1959.

Dumay expressed his special pleasure to return Beijing and to collaborate with conductor Yu again. "Musically, we share something in the same direction. I agree that it is important for musicians from different countries or different cultural backgrounds to work together," he said.

"We play our Mozart and our Beethoven together. This time, I bring with a typical European orchestra and we will play a Chinese music with a Chinese orchestra. It's interesting. It's a culture wedding."

He also admitted "The Butterfly Lovers" was the first and the only Chinese music he had known. "But it's a good beginning. And I would be very happy to get to know more Chinese music. If your composers give me new works I would like to play it worldwide," he said.

How does a foreign musician interpret a very typical Chinese music based on a household Chinese story? Dumay said the answer to that question was in his performance because it was very hard to describe music or his reading of a piece of music in words. "Sure, Yu has told me the touching story but when I play it, I try to forget the story. I think, if keep the story in your mind whenever you play it, the music would turn out a photocopy. For me, every time I play it, it's a new dream," added Dumay.

In addition to "The Butterfly Lovers," Dumay will play Chausson's "Poeme," Saint-Saens' "Havanaise" and Ravel's "Tzigane."

Night of Mozart

The following Monday night at the same venue, Dumay will conduct Royal Chamber Orchestra of Wallonia to play a night of Mozart, including the music genius' "Adagio in E Major," "Violin Concerto No 2 in D Major," "Violin Concerto No 5 in A Major (Turkish)" and "Symphony in E Flat Major for Violin, Viola and Orchestra."

While recording Mozart's complete concertos for Deutsche Grammophon, Dumay conducted the Salzburg Camerata Academica himself. In assuming the double role of soloist and conductor, he underscored the close relationship between Mozart's violin concertos and his chamber music.

"I have played and directed Mozart's concertos for years in the Konzertmeister tradition of Mozart's age. This approach helps bring out the close ties between the orchestration of the concertos and Mozart's chamber music in particular the quartets," said he.

The Mozart night on Monday at the Forbidden City Concert Hall is one of Dumay's projects for Mozart Year (2006) in three continents, which will be produced into a DVD.

(China Daily October 19, 2006)