Orchestra 2001: From China to Scotland

The star of Orchestra 2001's latest outing was a pleasant, unassuming woman who performs dazzling maneuvers on a traditional Chinese instrument. Wu Man's instrument, the pipa, is usually described as a Chinese lute, but its sonic colors include the twang of the banjo, and it produces a broader range of colors and technical effects than any Western plucked instrument, with the possible exception of the harp.

Wu Man has acquired an international reputation while playing with groups like the Kronos Quartet and Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble. She has inspired compositions by Philip Glass, Tan Dun and other major composers from both sides of the East-West divide.

For this event, Man premiered a new piece for solo pipa by veteran composer May-Tchi Chen and added her instrument's unique voice to two pieces written by Tan Dun in the '90s: a Concerto for String Quartet and Pipa and an unclassifiable novelty entitled Circle with Four Trios, Conductor, and Audience.

Chen's Transformation in Purple showcases the pipa's technical possibilities, but it's also a very Chinese piece in which the musical progressions symbolize the journey to the highest spiritual state. Tan Dun's concerto integrates the Western string quartet and the Eastern plucked instrument into a blend that includes a beautiful adagio and a rustic sequence, complete with shouts from the musicians, that suggests Chinese rice farmers and rural American banjo pluckers may have more in common than we think.

Surrounded by trios

You can approach Circle with Four Trios, Conductor, and Audience as an example of the composer's interest in ritual, or you can think of it as a good-natured audience participation riff. The four trios consist of a percussion unit (including the piano); a harp, pipa, and guitar trio; and a string trio and wind trio that James Freeman placed behind the audience, in the balcony.

With the audience thus surrounded by the circle referred to in the title, Freeman taught us our parts, which consisted of sighs, shouts and twitters emitted on cue to a specified number of beats. We all had a good time following the composer's instructions, but I should note that Circle also includes moments of poetic melody and a beautiful section for the three plucked instruments.

The program was entitled "Chinese Visions," but it included side trips to the highlands of Scotland and Peru.

Jennifer Barker's Naibh Beags (Nyvaigs) belongs to a "battle music" genre that dates back to the Renaissance. Most battle pieces try to evoke the "thrill" of warfare. Barker approaches her subject with a modern sensibility that's more conscious of the horror of battle alluded to in her text: two verses from The Highlander, an 18th Century poem that the composer read in her native Scots accent.

Frenzy of battle

Naibh Beags depicts the 11th- and 12th-Century battles between the Celts and the Norse that culminated with a battle in which the Norse withdrew for the last time and burned their dead on islands still called the Burnt Isles. Barker opens with subdued ominous drumming on snares and timpani, and builds toward the clash as she reads the first half of the text. In the middle section, she switches to pure music and captures the frenzy of battle with devices that include some striking writing for saxophone and ocarina.

A soprano part combines syllables from Gaelic and Norwegian and evokes the fury and desperation of the combatants. The final section follows the madness with a beautiful floating melody for soprano, flute, and saxophone and a verse from the poem that describes the Norse retreat and the burning of the dead.

City in the clouds

The title of Jay Reise's Lunahuana refers to a Peruvian mountain city perched where the sky is permanently divided between threatening clouds and blue sunshine. Lunahuana is composed for two percussionists, who mostly play the xylophone and the marimba, but the interactions are so complicated that Freeman had to conduct a work that looked like it should be a conductorless chamber piece. Reise's music follows the general pattern suggested by the geographical reference, but this piece would be effective even if you'd never heard of the extra-musical symbolism.

This was one of Orchestra 2001's most enjoyable evenings. The mix of Eastern and Western elements and the peculiarities of Tan Dun's Circle should have satisfied anyone who was looking for a bit of entertainment. But the fun and novelty came wrapped in a package that included a satisfying assortment of deeper pleasures.