Shi Yijie: Singing art songs is like "walking a tightrope"

Chen Sa Shi Yijie

Information Times News (Reporter Huang Wenhao) On the evening of January 11, the "Shi Yijie × Chen Sa Chinese Art Song Concert" was staged at the Xinghai Concert Hall. This "top match" combination of vocal music and piano has attracted a large number of fans and vocal students to watch. In the evening, after Shi Yijie sang each song, warm applause broke out from the stage, and the two artists also returned to the audience three times. Many audience members said, "I remember that this is the most enthusiastic vocal performance in Guangzhou recently."

Western classic opera is Shi Yijie's well-known "housekeeping skill", but for this tenor who is active on the world stage, the importance of Chinese art songs is also self-evident. In November last year, Shi Yijie and Chen Sa released the album "Chinese Art Songs", and the night before the performance, the two rarely attended the meeting to share the story behind the album and performance with Guangzhou music fans and music students.

Shi Yijie:

Depict poetry paintings on stage with sound

Talking about the original intention of recording "Chinese Art Songs", Shi Yijie revealed that the 2020 performance pressed the pause button to give himself a gap in recording, when he listed three sets of recording tracks, "one is Tosti's art songs, one is the art songs of Italian composers such as Rossini, Bertini, etc., and there are Chinese art songs." When consulting the data, Shi Yijie found that the foreign art song information is rich and there are many versions, while the chinese art song information is very small, "especially the tenor version of the recording is very small, I will follow the score one by one to learn, after learning to write down what I think is good, I have this song list." ”

The album "Chinese Art Songs" is mainly selected by composers who represent the classical style of the Chinese academic school in the early 20th century. In addition to those enduring classics, such as Zhao Yuanren's "Teach Me How not to Miss Her", the album also excavates a number of unknown and sung works, such as Huang Yongxi's "Where are the Si people". In the second half of this concert, Shi Yijie chose to focus on ancient poetry works, such as "Fengqiao Night Berth" composed by Li Yinghai and Zhao Jiping's "Quiet Night Thoughts", etc., trying to show the audience the general appearance of excellent Chinese vocal art works.

Compared with the performance of "19 HighC" on the opera stage, Shi Yijie said that arias are usually the catharsis of emotions after the development of opera stories to a certain stage, while art songs are more colorful, "like poetry, how to show it in front of the audience, need to use richer tones, have more ways of expression." ”

Shi Yijie believes: "When singing art songs, it is like walking a tightrope, and it is easy to accidentally step on an empty foot and leave a flaw. If singing arias is like a car hanging 120 yards on the highway, singing art songs is like riding a bicycle and taking 5 minutes to walk 10 meters, all by control. ”

In addition, the singing of art songs also requires the accumulation of life experience and understanding of literary works. For example, in the second half of "Quiet Night Thoughts", there are only four short sentences, but if you have seen "Li Bai's biography", you can feel why he wrote such a poem. This time I sang four paragraphs, trying to express Li Bai's life in a song through different timbres. ”

Chen Sa:

Present the beauty of "less is more"

One of the highlights of the performance was shi Yijie's collaboration with the famous pianist Chen Sa. At the meeting, Shi Yijie revealed that it was through mutual friends that she led the way to the piano song and the song. The two also invariably stated that in art songs, the piano and vocal music are not accompaniment and singing relationship, but ensemble relationships. Chen Sa said: "Before the cooperation, there were also concerns, whether the piano had enough space and content to carry and unfold, and after the cooperation, this concern was completely gone." Of course, the proportion of the piano and the degree of interaction and fusion with the sound in each piece are different, which is also very interesting. ”

Chen Sa said: "Less is more, art songs are a more refined form, it uses fewer notes to create and outline the picture, which requires a more detailed process, and this process also allows the value of music to be reflected." "For example, in "Listening to the Rain", the piano imitates the sound of rain, and it is necessary to use the sound of the mood to inspire everyone's imagination of the scene; in "Maple Bridge Night Berth", there is a similar practice of simulating other instruments, using an instrument to complete the symphonic effect." On the whole, the overall temperament of Chinese art songs is very light and transparent, but it is very delicate and emotional, which is a characteristic of oriental beauty. ”

Shi Yijie also revealed that the cooperation with Chen Sa has just begun, "I hope that there will be a second and third series after "Chinese Art Songs", the second series will be biased towards ancient poetry, and the third will be biased towards modern art songs, hoping to make the repertoire more complete." ”

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At what age is it appropriate to learn vocal music?

Shi Yijie said so

At present, more and more children are learning vocal music and instrumental music, and this year's Guangdong Provincial Music Science Examination has exceeded 10,000 candidates, and many parents have brought their children to the meeting on the same day. There are parents who consult the best time for their children to learn vocal music, and Shi Yijie's advice is after the sound change period, that is, at the age of fifteen or sixteen. "If you want to learn to sing when you are a child, you should use scientific singing methods to avoid premature contact with some pieces that are too high-pitched, and at the same time, it is recommended to learn an instrument from an early age to improve the musical literacy of music literacy in all aspects such as notation and pitch, which will be very helpful for learning vocal music later."

【Source: Information Times】

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