Stuff you should listen to #1

Confession: I don’t spend a lot of my spare time listening to classical music. It’s mostly because of the fatigue – I hear enough of it at work and want to let my ears be open to something else on my off time, and my tastes are eclectic. But occasionally I’ll encounter an orchestral work that strikes me as that “something else”, music that gives me a slightly different perspective, music that inhabits a slightly different world than the one I work in daily.

A few weeks back I was with the Virginia Symphony performing a program that included a new piece for me, Tan Dun’s Pipa concerto

My soloist was the incomparable Wu Man, the world’s foremost pipa player – an exquisite musician, a technical powerhouse, and a really lovely person (the musicians’ trifecta, in my book). The piece was written for her and she’s performed it numerous times, so she had some helpful insights, particularly with some of the more theatrical elements of the piece. For instance, in the second movement, there is a very long ostinato in the second violins, and when they finish it, the composer indicates that the entire orchestra should breathe out. Wu explained it as “We’re sighing because the violins were playing the same thing for so long and we got tired of it”, which brought out the humor in the moment that I hadn’t quite grasped initially.

It’s a piece that successfully marries music from two very different genres – the classical symphonic orchestra and Chinese folk music – without taking away from either. What I found particularly gratifying is the way in which Tan Dun uses the strings of the orchestra to mimic traditional Chinese instruments in a manner that pays homage to the sound and gesture of the instruments without trying to sound exactly like them. This calls for some extended techniques for the string players and creates a sound world that is distinctive and unique.

And I think it’s well worth a listen for anyone – a good recording of it here – and tell me if doesn’t delight you ears as it did mine.