I currently have a piece on _The Butterfly Lovers_ at:
http://www.ausnet.net.au/~clemensr/b-lovers.htm
Unfortunately, this piece hasn't been updated for a while; & so omits any
reference to the best Western recording of the score currently available:
Vanessa-Mae's on EMI 7243 5 56483 2 7 ("China Girl - The Classical Album
2"; with the London Philharmonic/Viktor Fedotov). VM isn't always the most
fashionable of violinists amongst the hardcore classical community; but
she has clearly rethought this score in the light of her English musical
training: she accentuates the music's textures over its rhythmic drive...
the result is a great romantic sweep of a piece: rather different to the
all-singing, all-dancing bounce preferred by more idiomatic PR-Chinese
performances; but a lot of fun for all that.
(The page is also about to move. For a number of reasons, i can no longer
afford my old world.net account; & am switching to a new one.net.au server.
All the transfers should be complete in about a week or so.
(My work email of [log in to unmask] will not change, fortunately;
& is currently the most reliable way of reaching me)
This might be called the executive summary of my piece:
_The Butterfly Lovers_ (literally _Lian Shanbo & Zhu Yingtai_) is a
traditional Chinese story of starcrossed lovers: a Chinese _Romeo &
Juliet_ (or _Magnun & Layla_, _Tristan & Isolde_, _Tony & Maria_, etc),
if you like. As with many of these traditional stories, TBL has a bunch
of folk melodies attached to it; & theese melodies have generally been used
(& reused) in fresh tellings of the story.
(While walking through the Yuexie Park in Guangzhou - you can't miss it:
it's just up the road from the Hard Rock Cafe - i heard a young musician
busking his way through the work's Lian Shanbo theme. Made a nice change
to _Stairway to Heaven_)
The story owes its reputation outside of the Chinese community to _The
Butterfly Lovers_ violin concerto written in 1958 by the Shanghai-based
composers, He Zhanhao & Chen Gang. Though still not widely known in the
West (though it _is_ starting to be heard out of Asia), the work's rise
& rise in the pantheon of Chinese musical art borders on the phenomenal:
multiply recorded (i have seen racks of 20 or more versions of the score
in Hongkong & PRC music shops) & adapted (sometimes by the composers;
often by the the proverbial A N Other) into different forms, including
erhu, sheng & goahu concerti; a cantata & a string quartet (if the truth
be known, there's probably an accordian sextet as well; although if there
is, i haven't had the questionable privilege of having heard it),
performance-wise, this score is probably the most popular classical
composition of the 20th century.
(Assuming you don't consider _Stairway to Heaven_ a classical composition)
Structurally, the score borrows lock, stock & smoking barrel from
Tchaikovski's fantasy overture _Romeo & Juliet_, which gives the score
a rather freeformed sonata-style shape from it's collection of exotic
melodies; & in turn, this Tchaikers-on-the-Huang Ho approach inspired a
whole orchestra of similar single movement concerti in the PRC... one
of these successors - He Zhanhao's _Lovers in War_ erhu concertu, which
manages to use a program set against the Japanese invasion of China -
may actually be even better than its more famous predecessor.
TBL is a lovely work; but it's not really designed for people who believe
that contemporary music begins & ends in Boulez....
All the best,
Robert Clements <[log in to unmask]>
<http://www.ausnet.net.au/~clemensr/welcome.htm>
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