Qin Wenchen: Orchestral Works

reviewed by: Frank Kouwenhoven

Qin Wenchen. Orchestral Works. With Ji Wei, zheng, Lan Weiwei, pipa, and the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. Conducted by Gottfried Rabl. Kairos 1 cd, recorded in Vienna 2016, produced 2018, TT 66’

Qin Wenchen is a Chinese contemporary composer, who first learned the tricks of the trade in the late 1980s with Xu Shuya and Zhu Jian’er in Shanghai. He continued his studies with Nicolaus A. Huber in Essen around the turn of the century. He is now a teacher at the Central Conservatory in Beijing, and widely regarded as one of the most influential artists of his generation. This album contains four of his finest compositions for symphony orchestra, all of them impressive in different ways. Echoes from the other Shore (2015) is a subdued work which employs a zheng (bridged zither) and quotes a Central Asian folk motive. The role of the orchestra is a delicate one, not at any point drowning out the soloist (as sometimes happens in zheng concertos written by less gifted composers in China). Ji Wei expertly plays the zheng part.

The Nature’s Dialogue, for orchestra and audio tapes (2010) makes brilliant use of animal sounds, which are admirably integrated into the orchestral fabric. Lone bird calls alternate with noises from large flocks of birds and other sounds, in ways that turn the work into an overwhelming experience and a profound quest for meaning. Pure magic is the 11th century vocal tune that turns up (in the audo tape) towards the end. If any composer knows how to capture nature in sounds it must be Qin Wenchen, who spent his childhood and teenage years under a vast sky on the grasslands of the Ordos region in Inner Mongolia, herding sheep. The same expansive feeling, evoking a deep sense of space and time, permeats ‘Across the Skies’ for pipa and strings (2012), admirably played by Lan Weiwei, one of China’s finest pipa soloists. The oldest work on the disc, ‘Lonely Song’, for 42 strings, was composed in 1990, possibly as an elegy (although this is not stated explicitly in the program notes) for the victims of the 1989 crackdown on the democracy protests. The four works offer a fine introduction to the versatility and orchestral mastery of Qin Wenchen, and are impeccably played by the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra under Gottfried Rabl. The same artists also recorded a second fine disc of Qin’s music, with three of his concertos, for violin (2012), for cello (2008) and for suona (2010). The recordings were made in the same venue and in the same year (2016), likewise with Chinese soloists, but they appeared on a different label (Naxos).