On October 24th, the 24th Beijing International Music Festival will usher in the closing concert at Poly Theater. Tan Dun, a famous composer and conductor, will conduct the China Philharmonic Orchestra and join hands with erhu player Lu Yiwen, pipa player Han Yan, and guzheng player Su Chang to present the works of Stravinsky and Tan Dun himself. The theme of this year's festival is "Masters and Remembrance", and there are three concerts in the form of dialogues commemorating the composers across time and space. Previously, Ding Shande's dialogue with Mahler and Chen Qigang's dialogue with Saint-San have been staged successively, and the two sides of this dialogue are Stravinsky and Tan Dun. Tan Dun said that this dialogue with Stravinsky is a dialogue of culture, aesthetics and musicology, and at the same time, it also explores the ultimate display of Chinese aesthetics and Chinese musicology through the fusion of water and fire.
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A master, a big group, three beautiful women...
Tomorrow night, the closing concert of the Poly Theater, the dialogue between Tan Dun and Stravinsky is undoubtedly wonderful, and Stravinsky's rare early works "Fireworks" and the classic "Firebird" suite are dialogued with Tan Dun's "Guzheng and Pipa Double Concerto" and erhu Concerto "Fire Sacrifice". It is also very eye-catching in terms of deductive form, a personable conductor, a high-level symphony orchestra, and three beautiful performers with good piano skills. Yesterday, in the rehearsal hall of the China Philharmonic Orchestra, the artists under the direction of Tan Dun conducted a relaxed and rigorous rehearsal. At the press conference held after the rehearsal, several musicians shared their respective impressions of musical works with the media.
Working with the three beautiful artists, Tan Dun felt very happy and cheerful, calling the three "playing masters". His evaluation of the young erhu player Lu Yiwen is that her performance is very exquisite and exquisite, "This process is very interesting, it is the process of turning a beautiful woman into a giant, which is particularly enjoyable." He also commented that Han Yan is a very rare performer, her playing tone is as beautiful as Lu Yiwen, such a good tone is so rough and shocking, it is simply a mixture of water and fire. Su Chang, also from the Central Conservatory of Music, said that he had watched her grow up to become an excellent performer.
Tan Dun and young performers Han Yan, Lu Yiwen and Su Chang
In this dialogue with Stravinsky, Tan Dun said that it is mainly through the fusion of water and fire to explore the ultimate display of Chinese aesthetics and Chinese musicology.
The opening work on the night of the concert was Stravinsky's 1908 Fireworks, which is said to be Stravinsky's wedding gift to his teacher's daughter, with impressionistic overtones. Tan Dun said: "The concert opened with 'Fireworks', which was Stravinsky's work as a student. Once, during class, his teacher told him to write a work about fireworks. Unexpectedly, this work set off a firework for the closing of this year's music festival, which was wonderful. Speaking of another work, "Firebird," Tan Dun said that this is one of Stravinsky's most mature works, "from "Fireworks" to "Firebird", just draw a beautiful parabola." ”
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Pay homage to the heroes with Fire Sacrifice
At the closing concert, Stravinsky and Tan Dun, two modern composers of different eras, hooked up with each other and used music to launch a dialogue in time and space. The music master Stravinsky, known as the "Picasso of the music industry", is the "hero" that Tan Dun has admired since his student days, and this performance is not so much a dialogue between the two as tan Dun's commemoration and tribute to his music on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the death of the hero he thought of when he was young. The Beijing International Music Festival commissioned Tan Dun to compose "Youth", which mixes rock, Peking opera and atonal music on the 15th occasion, fully demonstrating the festival and the composer's affirmation of each other's fearless imagination. This time, at the behest of the Beijing International Music Festival, Tan Dun took out the Erhu Concerto "Fire Sacrifice". The composer combines traditional Chinese sacrificial music with court music, constructs a stage sacrifice for contemporary music with five emotions, imagines the dialogue between man and nature, expresses reflection on war, and prays for human peace. Tan Dun said deeply: "I am very grateful to the Beijing International Music Festival and concert sponsor Credit Suisse Group, because without you, we would not have been able to turn notes into sounds. ”
When the Beijing International Music Festival commissioned Tan Dun a work, Tan Dun asked if he could adapt a work created for a national orchestra a few years ago, which included three huqins — Gao Hu, Zhonghu and Erhu , and this time he changed the score, changed the instruments to Xiqin and Erhu, turned the folk band into a symphony orchestra, and turned this piece into a work that can be performed all over the world, and the name is also positioned as "Erhu Symphonic Concerto". Talking about the creative process, Tan Dun sighed a lot: "The creative process is at the time of the epidemic, I see that so many of our relatives have lost their lives, and so many heroes who have fought against the epidemic have sacrificed for this. On television, I saw India in the square without seeing the fires where the heads burned the corpses. During the epidemic, I have been to Wuhan and I have a deep affection for Wuhan, and I discussed music here when Yo-Yo Ma and I returned to Hong Kong. Wuhan is a city of heroes and a city of music. In fact, this work was originally dedicated to the people who lost their lives in the war, and this re-adaptation of the work in the epidemic has linked my previous writing to the current writing. I feel that the epidemic is also a very serious war for mankind, and I dedicate this work to our loved ones and those honorable heroes who have lost in the epidemic. ”
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Fire Sacrifice is a dialogue between the primitive and the future
Tan Dun stressed that the work "Fire Sacrifice" is a rhythmic dialogue with Stravinsky, "The emergence of Stravinsky has brought about a decisive change in the entire classical music world, and the most important change is that he has made the original and the future related in the presentation of modernism, so that the music in the village has become an international fashion." This is precisely the breathing presentation of a similar same aesthetic in our rich heritage of folk music. This change is interesting because the rhythm comes from the melody, and the melody is precisely from the beginning to the end, from the point and line surface, to the dialogue with Stravinsky, so that the whole history of world music flows like a primitive river to our feet, and then continues. ”
In fact, at the beginning of the commission of "Fire Sacrifice", Yu Long once told Tan Dun that he must use ethnic music to talk to Stravinsky, and he found Yu Long's idea very interesting. Tan Dun told a story, when Stravinsky's "Spring Festival" premiered, he said that there was no national music in his music, it was all his own original, and there was only one place where he assumed to create a kind of national music. However, after Stravinsky's death, musicologists studied it piece by piece, and later found that there were 13 traces of ethnic music in the work. "So, he just made the original thing very modern, and the whole classical music scene was knocked out by him." Tan Dun said that the creation of "Fire Sacrifice" is the same, "We used the folk music of Guizhou, Yunnan and Hunan, ancient puppet opera, ancient sacrifice music, ancient ritual music, and made a lot of debugging of harmonious music, so that people all over the world can feel the impact of future music through Chinese primitive music." ”
Tan Dun believes that China's classical music really began with only 100 years of history, "and in the past 100 years, Chinese classical music has presented a world pattern today on the basis of such rich folk music." Therefore, under the premise of the national music of the world pattern, re-talking to Stravinsky is a very profound process in my opinion. So, we can see China in the world, and at the same time we can see the world in China, which is why we have a dialogue with Stravinsky, which is a dialogue of culture, aesthetics, and musicology. ”
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"Fire Sacrifice" is also a dialogue between ancient and modern times
In addition to being an East-West dialogue, this concert is also a dialogue between ancient and modern times. During the performance of the work "Fire Festival", the young erhu player Lu Yiwen had a three-string huqin in his hand in addition to the erhu that we commonly see. She revealed that this piano is the predecessor of the erhu Xiqin, "everyone should know that the erhu is actually a two-string instrument, the Xiqin used this time is three strings, is a musical instrument restored by Tan Dun through the Dunhuang mural, he let this ancient instrument come out of the mural and walk in front of people, I think it is a very interesting innovation." At the concert, I will use these two instruments to tell the past and present lives of the erhu. ”
Young erhu player Lu Yiwen
Regarding Xi Qin, Tan Dun said that he had seen this thing on the mural of Dunhuang Cave 10 in the Dunhuang Album before, and he was eager to go to the field to see the mural, but this cave has been repaired and not opened to the public. Like the White Pagoda Temple in Beijing, Tan Dun laughed and said that he had been studying in the city for ten years and had never entered the temple. One day, Tan Dun was looking at the murals in Dunhuang, and a painter who was repairing the murals in the tenth cave came to him to take a picture with him, and that day he saw the real Xi Qin on the murals here. Tan Dun said: "From this mural, we began to think about how to turn the oldest music mural in China into sound, so this Xiqin became a part of us." Later, he made the prototype of this instrument according to the old artists in Quanzhou according to the appearance on the mural, and then at the Shanghai National Musical Instrument Factory, hoping to industrialize and scientificize the Xiqin here, and on the stage of the Beijing International Music Festival, he really presented the sound restored in the middle of a scientific ancient mural to the audience in Beijing.
Lu Yiwen, who has been playing the traditional erhu, has also had to play the three-string Xiqin, which is also a challenge, and there must be a process of adaptation. She once asked Tan Dun where she had seen Xi Qin. Tan Dun said that in addition to the murals, he also encountered them in his life. Tan Dun sighed that he always felt that there would always be something going on in the eye. One day, as soon as he came out of the subway at Dengshikou, he saw a blind man pulling an erhu, and what surprised him was that the erhu in his hand was actually three strings. "The tone of the tara is very ancient." Tan Dun went up and stuffed a few hundred yuan into his pocket, and then asked a lot of questions. For example, what are those two strings for? The other party replied that the two strings there were equivalent to one string, and the other string was played with the big thumb. Therefore, in Lu Yiwen's performance, many places are played with big thumbs.
This is Lu Yiwen's first contact with the three-string Xiqin, but she said that she does not feel strange, because Xiqin is the predecessor of Erhu, although it has changed from two strings to three strings, the two strings inside are counted as one string, and there are some changing angles when playing, which is basically equivalent to the erhu's playing method. Lu Yiwen said that in fact, the huqin is connected, and it can play the erhu and can also play other huqin. However, Mr. Tan Dun made some changes to the instrument, such as using silk strings, such as using soft bows, which need to be controlled during playing and practicing. "I think Xiqin is very interesting because it can make a very old and rustic sound."
In addition, the few yellowish strings on the Xi qin in Lu Yiwen's hand also have a history, which is a very exquisite silk string. Tan Dun said that he went to Nara, Japan, to look for silk strings from the Tang Dynasty, "where every household is making silk strings, and more than eight generations of craftsmen are from Xi'an." He asked strangely, why are there yellow silk strings? Craftsmen say that in the past, the silk strings of the Tang Dynasty were all yellow, and the yellow silk strings were very tough and resonated better than the white ones. They said religiously, "The most important thing is that it represents the voice of the Buddha." The organ is the voice of God, and the Chinese pipa, guzheng, and xiqin are all the voices of the Buddha and cannot be changed. ”
Through the excavation and collation of this ancient musical instrument, Tan Dun believes that the ancient Chinese invented so many musical instruments, "In fact, musical instruments are a history of mankind, so I think musical instruments cannot be broken." Because the instrument is broken, history is broken. I think everyone has this importance, and can extend history through musical instruments and find history. ”
Written by Zhang Xuejun
Edited by Zhang Xuejun
Photography by Fang Fei, Zhang Xuejun, Tu Song