Classic Concertos Butterfly Lovers and Yellow River
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China.org.cn, September 25, 2008
Time: 2008/10/2
Venue: Beijing Concert Hall
Price: 100/180/380/580/880/1080
The piano concerto Yellow River and the Butterfly Lovers' Violin Concerto are two internationally known Chinese works that combine Western music methodology with Chinese source materials.
The Butterfly Lovers' Violin Concerto is one of the most famous works of Chinese music and certainly one of the most famous outside of China. It is an orchestral adaptation of an ancient legend, the Butterfly Lovers. Written for the western style orchestra, it features a solo violin played using some Chinese techniques.
Traditional Chinese composers often write in a different tonal system than western classical music. As a result, this can make the music sound constantly out of tune to some Western ears. The Butterfly Lover's Violin Concerto is written in the familiar western tonal system, but it utilizes many Chinese melodies, chord structures and patterns. This makes the Butterfly Lovers' more accessible than other Chinese works, such as the also famous Yellow River Piano Concerto.
The Yellow River Piano Concerto (Pinyin: Huang He Xie Zou Qu) is a piano concerto with a strikingly difficult solo part, arranged by Yin Chengzong and based on the Yellow River Cantata by Xian Xinghai. Since its première, the concerto has been constantly performed in Chinese communities around the world, such popularity revealing, to a certain extent, the obsession of Chinese audiences with virtuosic display of 19th century Romantic concerto genre. The whole concerto is divided into four parts: Prelude-The Song of the Yellow River Boatman; Ode to the Yellow River; The Yellow River in Anger; Defend the Yellow River.