Why have contemporary Chinese-born composers been so successful among concert audiences in the West? Perhaps it's because they give the Western listener something to hang onto in difficult music: even audiences with no particular background in Chinese traditional music can identify a Chinese element a composer is working with -- a tune, a traditional instrument, a scale -- and pick out the relationships it forms with other musical elements. Qigang Chen is a Chinese-French composer, said in the booklet of this release on the major Virgin Classics label to be among the most frequently performed of contemporary composers. He is less well known in the U.S., and the enduring orientation toward subtle colors in French orchestral music is audible in the four pieces on this disc. The performances here, recorded at different times between 1990 and 2005, show a composer who has applied considerable imagination to the task of combining two musical traditions. Extase (1995), for oboe and orchestra, forces the oboe in the direction of a Chinese folk instrument called the so-na. The player uses circular breathing and difficult repeated-note techniques to create a strong, harsh reed-instrument sound that is nevertheless carefully matched to the oboe's capabilities. San Xiao (Three Bursts of Laughter, 1995-1996), by contrast, forces an ensemble of three Chinese traditional instruments in the direction of Western music; it was commissioned by a Chinese ensemble whose players had to find ways of making their instruments produce Western semitones. The most recent piece on the disc L'eloignement (Departure, 2004) is organized around a Chinese folk song about a necessary parting of a married couple. To this expressive, accessible element Qigang Chen counterposes passages with complex divisions of his 34-piece string orchestra. The early Yuan (Origins, 1987) works hints of Chinese tonalities into a dense score that draws on influences from Messiaen and Debussy. Qigang Chen's music is tense and precise, yet accessible and attractive; listeners who have heard the works of Chinese-American composers like Bright Sheng or Chen Yi in concert should taste this alternate flavor of Chinese-Western fusion.
© TiVo