Born in central Hunan in 1957, the Chinese composer Tan Dun has already begun to build a considerable reputation for himself in New York and in Europe and will become even more prominent, I am sure, now that he has signed an exclusive recording contract with Sony Classical. Following the example of Takemitsu in forging a synthesis between Eastern and Western musical cultures, Dun’s explicit references to Chinese village ritual culture in his music give it a distinctive colour. But whereas Takemitsu drew on the colouristic harmonic tradition of Debussy and Messiaen in his hard-won oeuvre to create a refined, almost impersonal dialogue between music and silence, Dun’s approach is declamatory and theatrical, with Eastern elements set in such dramatic relief that we are constantly aware of their personal meaning for the composer.
I was very impressed to hear a live performance of Orchestral Theatre II: Re given by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Martyn Brabbins at the Proms two years ago, but it is hardly surprising that the piece does not transfer well to disc. With performers spread around the hall, the audience humming, singing and shouting to signals from Brabbins, and even the composer himself contributing an improvised Chinese style vocal cadenza at the beginning of the piece, Orchestral Theatre II stole the show that day. On disc the same effects seem curiously flat and unmotivated, with Dun’s constant reharmonizations of a D pedal (the re of the title) now less a source of wonder than of irritation.
It does not help that Orchestral Theatre is placed on this recording immediately after Death and Fire, which uses many of the same orchestral techniques but with less individual impact. Written in response to an exhibition of Paul Klee’s work at MOMA in New York, Death and Fire has been recorded once before by the BBC Symphony Orchestra with the composer himself conducting. Both performances are similarly high voltage and committed, but I am still not convinced by the piece and especially the “J. S. Bach” interlude, in which excerpts from the great man’s C major Prelude and Fugue from Book 1 of Das wohltemperierte Klavier drift through a dream-like landscape. Surely that idea has already been done to death – you only have to think of Arvo Part’s Credo.
There are no such worries about Out of Peking Opera for violin and orchestra. Starting with a straight quotation of a famous, even banal Peking Opera tune, Dun executes a beautifully judged transition into a musical world that owes much to the violin concertos of Berg, Bartok and Shostakovich. With the remarkable Cho-Liang Lin as soloist rediscovering in Dun’s imitations of the traditional Chinese fiddle the Taiwanese heritage he himself left behind as a child, this performance has an intensity and magic that stays in the mind long after it is over.'