THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, February 16, 1995 TAG: 9502160390
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARK MOBLEY, MUSIC CRITIC
LENGTH: Long : 133 lines
This week's Virginia Symphony concerts begin with echoes. Echoes of China a thousand years ago. And echoes of a frigid state farm.
Composer Zhou Long was a promising piano student until the advent of the Cultural Revolution in 1966. As a teenager, he did the work of the state until he was free to resume music school.
In 1985, Zhou received a scholarship from Columbia University. His doctoral dissertation, a 1991 percussion concerto called ``Da Qu,'' opens Chrysler Hall concerts Friday and Saturday.
On Monday at dawn, Zhou arrived in Norfolk with a carload of Chinese percussion instruments. He spent part of the afternoon demonstrating them to players at Ohef Sholom Temple, where the orchestra is rehearsing this week.
He held the tassels of Chinese hand cymbals, which were about the size of soup bowls, and clanged them flat together. He clinked teacup-shaped finger cymbals, shaking them to create vibrato. A small gong swooped when he hit it.
One of the percussionists tried a red, table-sized bass drum. Zhou said, ``It looks big but it is very high.''
Zhou, 41, was raised in Beijing by artistic parents. But at age 16, his musical education was interrupted by the radical changes in Chinese culture.
``I was sent to the countryside for five years,'' he said. ``I was a tractor driver on a farm near the Russian border. Very cold. There was no house. We used tents. We had only two tractors.
``There was no music. I brought along my accordion. I played Russian pieces and some Chinese pieces, just for fun. On the radio there was no music. No classical music, no folk music. Traditional art, modern art, foreign art - not allowed. All bad things.''
Zhou later joined a song and dance troupe, where he gained practical composing and conducting experience.
In 1977, he entered the Central Conservatory in Beijing, where he became a proficient composer and conductor of works for Western and Chinese instruments. He married a fellow composer, Chen Yi, who has also been championed by Virginia Symphony Music Director JoAnn Falletta. Chen's ``Duo Ye No. 2,'' an evocation of a Chinese greeting ceremony, was enthusiastically received at a Kennedy Center performance by Falletta and The Women's Philharmonic three years ago.
Of their two-composer household in Brooklyn, Zhou said, smiling, ``It's a hard life. We fight each other and of course help each other. We know each other too well.''
Do they collaborate? ``Maybe in secret,'' he said, noting that the idea of composers working together is treated with some disdain in the West. But during the Cultural Revolution, about the only works to emerge from China were produced by state-sanctioned groups of composers.
After graduation, Zhou spent two years as composer-in-residence for the Broadcasting Symphony of China. His life had changed completely from his days on a tractor. ``I could work at home and compose and get a salary,'' he said. Albums of his work were released.
But when he won a scholarship to Columbia, it didn't mean that his struggles were over. ``The first year in the States was hard for me,'' he said. ``You have everything in China, but you have to start zero. The language was very hard work for me, a 30-year-old composer.''
Columbia is a bastion of rigorous musical thinking. Zhou knows that many listeners are put off by the modern musical techniqes he studied there. And some Chinese colleagues have expressed concern that he might forget his roots.
``I don't worry that I would lose that Chinese stuff,'' he said. ``That is in my background. I have a better, open mind and more skill. If you hear `Da Qu,' you won't say it is Western music.''
Falletta conducted the work in Beijing in July 1993. She recalled, ``What was very interesting was the orchestra had a hard time with the Brahms and Weber, but then they played this piece, which is much harder, with absolute ease. I asked the concertmaster, through the translator, why. He said, `Well, this is folk music.' ''
``Da Qu'' is pronounced ``DA chu,'' with an emphasis on the first syllable and a rising pitch in the second. The title refers to a style of music theater from the Sui Tang era, 581 through 907 A.D. All that exists are descriptions of Da Qu - no notes.
``There is no sound, no recording.'' He laughs. ``This is Da Qu sound. Nobody can beat me.''
The four prominent percussion parts of ``Da Qu'' are nothing new for Zhou, though they violate the strictures of his Chinese training. ``We studied orchestration,'' he said. ``Safe percussion was the first rule.''
But after the Cultural Revolution, Western ensembles began visiting China, and among them was a percussion group. In the '80s, Zhou said, he wrote the first Chinese piece for a large layout of solo percussion.
Today, music is as likely to be exported from China as imported to it. Orchestras in the United States are beginning to expand their repertoires, with programs reflecting various immigrant musical cultures.
``I think Chen Yi and Zhou Long have come to the United States at exactly the right time,'' Falletta said. ``The two of them are quite a pair. And their music is quite different, but both of them have had tremendous success. I think there's something communicative about their music that people are enjoying.
``They are very quiet, serious, self-effacing people. There's just one driving force in their lives, to make music. I think he's an unbelieveably gifted composer. He's very modest.''
Zhou returned to Beijing when Falletta conducted ``Da Qu'' there. He said Chen Yi was invited - ``under the table'' - to head the Central Conservatory, but refused. He said it's too soon for them to move back. ``The economic improvement is very good, but they don't put enough money in culture. There is no money for the arts organizations.''
And many opportunities beckon in the U.S. A new CD of Zhou's chamber works for Western and Chinese instruments is being released by the CRI label this month. Last year, The Shanghai Quartet, an ensemble in residence at the University of Richmond, featured Zhou's ``Song of the Ch'in'' on a Delos CD. The Washington Post called it ``one of the most distinctive and attractive string quartet recordings of recent memory.''
For many years, despite the proliferation of Asian instrumentalists, the only Asian composer to find broad success in the West was Toru Takemitsu of Japan. Of himself and his wife and their ever-growing roster of colleagues he said, ``I think this is the time. I think this is the beginning. We are the pioneer composers.'' MEMO: The Virginia Symphony will perform Chinese composer Zhou Long's ``Da
Qu'' Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. at Norfolk's Chrysler Hall. The
program also includes ``The Planets'' by Holst and saxophone concertos
by Debussy and Alexandre Rudajev with soloist Harvey Pittel. Music
Director JoAnn Falletta will conduct, and she will lecture on the
program one hour before each performance. Tickets $15 to $34. Call
623-2310 or 671-8100 for more information.
ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by BILL TIERNAN, Staff
Composer Zhou Long, seated, confers with Virginia Symphony Music
Director JoAnn Falletta as the symphony rehearses his percussion
concerto that it will perform Friday and Saturday at Chrysler Hall.
KEYWORDS: VIRGINIA SYMPHONY by CNB