Tan Dun resurrects the "erhu" of the three strings

Original title: Erhu Concerto "Fire Festival" Premiere Beijing International Music Festival Ends (Introduction)

Tan Dun resurrects the "Erhu" of the Three Strings (theme)

Tan Dun-style whimsical ideas

Brings "surround sound"

Stravinsky's "Fireworks" is played, and the music is aptly named, lively and colorful. After the song was played, the conductor and composer Tan Dun and the China Philharmonic Orchestra stood up to greet him. "Stravinsky was a student at the time of writing this work." Tan Dun turned to face the audience and began an affectionate guided tour. Stravinsky, who brought modern music into the public eye, is a "hero" admired by Tan Dun when he was a student. Today, two composers, also closely associated with the word "modern," meet in a musical dialogue.

The scene was photographed by Gao Qian, a reporter of the Beijing Evening News

Last night, the "New Works and Memories" symphony concert was staged at the Poly Theater, and "Fireworks" was like a celebration fireworks with music, illuminating the end of the 24th Beijing International Music Festival.

Subsequently, the Erhu Concerto "Fire Sacrifice" composed by Tan Dun, commissioned by the Beijing International Music Festival, ushered in the premiere. Born during the epidemic, it blends traditional Chinese sacrificial music with court music, expresses reflection on war, and prays for peace for mankind. Lu Yiwen, a soloist who plays both Erhu and Erhu's predecessor "Xiqin", the former is gentle and the latter is vicissitudes, alternately presenting the heavy emotional power in the song.

Tan Dun also deliberately placed the wood pipe part and a trumpet in the second floor audience seat, and when the music was advanced, the high and low sounds sounded around the theater. Tan Dun and the musicians also have to "make a sound" from time to time, or chant low, or pluck the strings, and Tan Dun's whimsical ideas can be seen everywhere.

In the second half, guzheng player Su Chang and pipa player Han Yan collaborated on Tan Dun's "Double Concerto of Guzheng and Pipa". Among them, the folk song "Little Cabbage" meets Bach's "Prelude to the Twelve Laws of Averages", and when the guzheng and pipa playing the ancient puppet opera meet the Western symphony, the "Double Concerto of Guzheng and Pipa" explores new possibilities of traditional Chinese aesthetics and Western modernist aesthetics. And in Stravinsky's dramatic masterpiece Firebird, the concert culminates. The melody created by the modernist musician who celebrated his 50th death this year once again pays homage to the theme of this year's festival "Masters and Remembrance".

Behind

The "erhu" of the three strings has a head

From Erhu to Xiqin, it is a journey to review ancient Chinese music. Lu Yiwen's Xi qin has a long story. The most obvious difference from the erhu is that the Xiqin has three strings. This instrument was first discovered by Tan Dun in a picture book about Dunhuang murals, and later, he went to the "cave" to see it with his own eyes. "Musical instruments are the history of mankind." Standing in the depths of thick history, Tan Dun said, "Musical instruments cannot be broken, otherwise history will be broken." ”

Therefore, Tan Dun decided to copy Xi Qin. He went to Quanzhou, first asked a teacher to make a prototype, and then made an attempt to "industrialize and scientificize" at the Shanghai National Musical Instrument Factory. The yellow strings used in Xi Qin also witness the rebirth of Chinese national instruments.

Tan Dun once looked for high-quality silk strings in Nara, Japan, and he was surprised to find that the people who made silk strings there were eight generations higher, and many of them were xi'an people. The craftsmen told him that the silk threads of the Tang Dynasty were all yellow, both tough and resonant, and they had adhered to this tradition for generations.

"Xiqin's voice is very old and rustic." Lu Yiwen said. To play, she needs to pluck one of the strings with her thumb. This kind of bullet method was obtained by Tan Dun asking an old man for advice. One day, he walked out of the Dengshikou subway station, met a blind man in la erhu, "the tune is very ancient", the opportunity to make people sigh happened, Tan Dun took a closer look, the old man's erhu in his hand happened to be three strings.

Xi Qin, an ancient musical instrument, walked out of the mural, made a sound and resurrection in Tan Dun's works, and the river of Chinese music flowed from source to source. When he commissioned Tan Dun, Yu Long, chairman of the Art Committee of the Beijing International Music Festival, raised the expectation that he must use national music to talk to Stravinsky.

"The idea is very interesting. The greatest feature of Stravinsky's music, and my favorite, is that in the extremely modern, challenging, avant-garde world of sound, you can always hear the original, the village, the folk. Tan Dun was excited. He remembered Stravinsky's famous "Rite of Spring", which shocked the classical music world, and although the composer himself claimed not to use national music, after his death, the musicians scrutinized it paragraph by paragraph and found traces of 13 pieces of national music in the work.

"Stravinsky presents folk music in modern orchestras, not in a pleasant, fluid, lyrical, vocal way, but in an injection of rhythmic melody, timbre melody, and primitivism." Tan Dun's biggest inspiration from Stravinsky was that "you can play with the things in the village into the trend of the world." ”

In "Fire Sacrifice", he uses the folk music of Guizhou, Yunnan and Hunan, and also integrates ancient puppet opera and sacrifice music, but the use and integration are not all so pleasant or vocal. "In the contemporary context, dialogue with Stravinsky is very important, so that the world can see China, and China can also see the world." Tan Dun said.

The Fire Festival also has many excavations and traditions of Chinese aesthetics and traditions. It unfolds with a monophonic Re, "as a thread, like a stroke of calligraphy, deriving an infinite richness of motivations, harmonic polyphony and sound layers." "This brilliant idea derived from minimalism is The aesthetic orientation of China. In addition, the orchestra is arranged on the second floor of the auditorium and on the stage, the former stands, the latter sits, just like the Standing and Sitting In the Tang Dynasty.

As a work of "modern" composers, "Fire Sacrifice" also retains Tan Dun's humanistic care for the epidemic era. The work was originally created in the 1990s for the film Nanjing Massacre. In Tan Dun's heart, the epidemic is also like a war without smoke, some people leave, some people sacrifice. He revised the orchestra section of the Fire Festival, and the Erhu section was also revised and expanded. Tan Dun hopes that his music can express the dialogue between human beings and nature, convey blessings, and further trigger deep thinking.