AN ENLIGHTENING CHINESE EAST-WEST EVENING 
                                              By Paul Hertelendy 
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Week of Nov. 22-29, 2009
                                                                  Vol. 12, No. 40
           BERKELEY---How far international music-making has come in China in the past generation was amply demonstrated by the Shanghai Symphony appearing with the astonishing  fine-boned pianist Yuja Wang.
            In visits to China starting in 1979, I found scant symphonic music and a painfully limited repertoire, mostly of revolutionary Chinese works plus Beethoven, who was lionized. Traditional Chinese music had largely recovered from the Cultural Revolution, but Western-style symphonic music remained as good as dead.
            Today, products from the Shanghai Conservatory and elsewhere are peopling a raft of orchestras playing a wide-ranging European and Chinese repertoire---and doing it very commendably, as the Shanghai players showed Nov. 22 at Zellerbach Hall before a large crowd, much of which came to hear the fast-rising gamine-like Ms. Wang. 
            The performance of Rachmaninoff’s popular Piano Concerto No. 2 was admirable. The slender 22-year-old pianist, looking much younger, hardly looked powerful enough for this mighty work. But she musters her strength efficiently and combines it with dynamic finesse, as was obvious from the seven chords of the opening, coming ever closer, knocking ever stronger. I did not find her slow movement to be very seductive, despite her feathery touch, but at least she was playing on an outstanding concert instrument with a resonant sound through the range. In the Scherzo finale, her power and velocity were supreme, blending aggressiveness with her innate lyricism.
            The concert was conducted by Long Yu, who is the Shanghai  music director. He uses huge gestures, and is not the most poetic of leaders. Maintaining a formal beat, he still managed to introduce some fetching hesitations and tempo shifts (rubato).
            The orchestra, which appeared to have around one-third women, played smartly; I was particularly taken by the caliber of the French horns near the start of the concerto. Whereas orchestra in the China of the 1930s and 1940s had many foreign players, the entire ensemble now appeared to be Chinese.
            The second half was given over to a East-West hybrid piece from 2001, “Iris devoilée” (Iris Unveiled), referring to a Greek goddess. Composer Qigang Chen put together an intriguing amalgam work attempting to display all the facets of female volatility and charm. This involved two sopranos, one a Western-type  coloratura (Xiaodup Chen), the other a Chinese-opera performer (Meng Meng) turning up in full eye-dazzling regalia. 
            Composer Chen showed many of his talents, from the romanticism of “Tender” with vocalize and strings, to the subtle Debussy-styled “Melancholic” segment. There is even a dissonant section---the one called “Jealous,” what else?---showing an awareness of modern trends internationally. The “Voluptuous” finale offered a ping-pong of serene solos on clarinet and cello, and alternating singing, with the fragmentary texts voiced in Chinese by Meng Meng in the traditional melismatic manner.
            These two vocalists were intermittently accompanied by three traditional Chinese instruments---pipa (a type of guitar), erhu (a lap-held violin) and guzheng (a psaltery). This opus was well chosen for this particular tour in bringing together elements of culture from both ends of the Pacific, and was definitely intriguing to listen to.
            The concert opened with the unruffled “Dawn on the Moscow River” from Mussorgsky’s opera “Khovantschina.” 
            Cal Performances presents touring attractions, at Zellerbach Hall and elsewhere, Berkeley. For info: (510) 642-9988, or go online. 

        ©Paul Hertelendy 2009
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           Paul Hertelendy has been covering the dance and modern-music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area with relish -- and a certain amount of salsa -- for years.
    These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never weakly) will focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with forays into books (by authors of the region), theater and recordings by local artists as well.
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