Seven Tunes Heard in China | Bright Sheng

Orchestration
vc
Duration20 min

CategorySolo Works (excluding keyboard)
Topic
- Culture - Chinese

Composer
Bright Sheng

Performances
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Programme Note

Composer Note:

[Bartok, Kodaly, and Stravinsky] were the ones who began a new approach to using roots music. Before them, composers just harmonized folk melodies. They didn’t convey the roughness, the savageness of this music.

I use [folk melodies] as a point of departure for my inspiration, and I take a lot of freedom. I’m searching for a new idiom that doesn’t belong to preconceived categories.

—Bright Sheng

Media

Seven Tunes Heard in China: I. Seasons

Seven Tunes Heard in China: II. Guessing Song

Seven Tunes Heard in China: III. Little Cabbage

Seven Tunes Heard in China: V. Diu Diu Dong

Seven Tunes Heard in China: VI. Pastoral Ballade

Seven Tunes Heard in China: VII. Tibetan Dance

Reviews

[In] Bright Sheng's Seven Tunes Heard in China we seemed to be hearing traces of ancient tunes being sung, hummed, whistled and played right across the Eurasian land mass. Mr. Sheng's movements, inprovisatory in how they are composed, suited Mr. Ma's style completely and provided him with a full range of virtuoso challenges, from the loud, incisive pizzicatos of the fourth piece, to the delicate harmonics of the fifth, going way up to the cello's topmost territory.

Paul Griffiths , The New York Times

For this disc, Yo-Yo Ma delves into the riches of the unaccompanied cello repertoire. Bright Sheng's astonishingly vibrant Seven Tunes Heard in China appropriates Quinhai folk tunes with a restless energy. Ma gets to the living core of these pieces, giving vividly conceived and flamboyant interpretations. Ma's gloriously limpid tone emphasizes their sensu-ality, from the heart-stopping stillness of the intriguingly named 'Little Cabbage' to the ethereal plucked glissandi of 'The Drunken Fisherman,' lifted straight from the sound-world of ancient Chinese music.

Catherine Nelson , BBC Music Magazine