From Mao to Mussorgsky, Shanghai Symphony rises up to world class

By Truman Wang
November 28, 2009

   Shanghai Symphony Orchestra

Long Yu, conductor
Yuja Wang, piano
Xiaoduo Chen, soprano
Meng Meng, soprano
Nan Wang, erhu
Jia Li, pipa
Xin Sun, guzheng

Tuesday, November 24, 2009 at Renée and Henry
Segerstrom Concert Hall, Costa Mesa, Calif.

Thirty years on, Mr. Stern may be gone, but his prophetic words have lived on and borne fruits in the form of Yo Yo Ma, Cho-Liang Lin (who is Taiwanese), Yundi Li, Lang Lang, Yuja Wang, plus countless other Chinese prodigies still in schools and conservatories.  But I think Mr. Stern would have been most proud to hear the group of young musicians who make up the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, playing Western masterpieces to world-class standards. 

Despite its 102 years of history, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra languished after Mao's brutal Cultural Revolution and really only flourished in the last 15 years or so.  In effect, it is a young and thoroughly modern orchestra led by a youngish maestro Long Yu in his mid-40’s.  Last Tuesday, it played at the OC’s Segerstrom Concert Hall (as part of the Philharmonic Society’s 6-week “Ancient Paths, Modern Voices” Chinese Cultural Festival)  in a daring program of Russian Romantic masters and Chinese modern music, with surprisingly positive results.

The concert opened with a beautifully gentle and evocative account of Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina Prelude, featuring a memorable oboe solo depicting dawn over the River Moscow.  The relative calm of the Mussorgsky was in contrast with  the next work, Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C-minor.  It’s a popular work at major piano competitions, but here both the orchestra and pianist Yuja Wang all played like winners.  Wang may be only 21 and rail thin, but she’s got big hands and a big technique to boot for Rachmaninov’s concerto which, while not the most intellectually challenging work in the repertoire, requires the highest technical mastery and a certain emotional maturity that this very young pianist was somehow able to convey.  Not much older than herself, the Shanghai Symphony musicians all played with great precision and enthusiasm under Long Yu’s direction.  Maestro Yu proved to be a potent and dynamic conductor for Rachmaninov, sometimes driving his young orchestra too hard and drowning out the piano during climaxes.   The Shanghai Symphony also betrayed its relative youth and inexperience in the often awkward tempo transitions and wooden phrasing, making the music sound mechanical and impeding the natural flow of the music. 

The entire second half of the concert was devoted to one work by Chinese composer Qigang Chen (b. 1951).   Its fanciful French title, Iris dévoilée, suggests perhaps a hint of Debussy or Messiaen.  Indeed, it’s made up of nine sections, each depicting with subtle orchestral hues one aspect of the female psyche – sensitive, tender, jealous, hysterical, voluptuous, Libertine, etc. (definitely a forbidden subject with the old repressive regime in Beijing). 

The execution of the work was expertly carried out by the orchestra, with special sound effects contributed by different sections of the orchestra, as well as traditional Chinese instruments erhu (by Nan Wang), pipa (by Jia Li), and guzheng (by Xin Sun).  The plaintive sounds of the erhu were especially memorable in the ‘Tender’ and ‘Melancholic’ sections.   Two sopranos –  one Western belcanto (Xiaoduo Chen), the other Peking opera (Meng Meng) – added to the exotic and strangely moving sound world of the work. 

On this night, the great Berlin Philharmonic happened also to be playing across town at the Walt Disney Hall.  While no one would put  the Shanghai Symphony in the same league as the Berlin, the Shanghai musicians should be very proud of themselves for having come a long way since Mao's days.  As this concert amply demonstrated, they have proved themselves more than capable of achieving the highest technical feats alongside the world's top orchestras.  What has yet to be seen (or heard) is their capacity to absorb the Classical tradition into their DNA, which will take more time.   But for now, the future does look bright indeed.  Mr. Stern had been right all along.
 

To purchase tickets for the Philharmonic Society of Orange County's 2009/10 season, call (949) 553-2422 or visit online www.philharmonicsociety.org



 

Truman C. Wang is editor-in-chief of Classical Voice, whose articles have appeared in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, the Pasadena Star-News, other Southern California publications, as well as the Hawaiian Chinese Daily.

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