The Xi'an Symphony Orchestra and its chorus will stage Chang'an in Beijing on Saturday and Sunday.[Photo provided to China Daily]
A symphony concert combines the music and poetry of a former capital city, Chen Nan reports.
Chang'an, a symphony concert themed on Tang Dynasty (618-907) poetry, premiered in Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi province, on Nov 14.
The audience enjoyed a combination of classical music, traditional operas and guqin (a zither-like seven-stringed traditional musical instrument) and Tang-era poems recited by veteran actors, including Pu Cunxin and Zhang Guoli.
The concert will be staged by the Xi'an Symphony Orchestra and Xi'an Symphony Orchestra Chorus at Beijing's National Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday and Sunday, as part of the ongoing China Orchestra Festival organized annually by the NCPA.
This year, 21 concerts featuring 22 symphony orchestras from 14 provinces in the country are being presented from April 8 to May 7.
The music piece, composed by Sun Chang, consists of parts of seven famous Tang poems, including A Moonlit Night on the Spring River by Zhang Ruoxu, A Song of Peach-Blossom River by Wang Wei and The Pipa Player by Bai Juyi.
"The poems are timeless, and we read them as children in school. With the arrangement of different musical instruments-both Western and Chinese-as well as human voices and guqin, the music piece gives the audience an experience of communicating with the great poets from the Tang Dynasty," says Sun.
The concert also features a performance of Peking Opera.[Photo provided to China Daily]
Sun, who's also a pianist, graduated from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music with a master's degree in 2011. He has been teaching at the university's conducting department for 10 years.
Sun composed the music piece in August 2019. Its debut was planned for February 2020 but had to be postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
It's not the first collaboration between the composer and the Xi'an Symphony Orchestra.
In the summer of 2020, the composer was commissioned to adapt a traditional folk song, titled Jiangling Yisheng Zhen Shanchuan (The General Commander's Order Shakes Mountains and Rivers), for a concert that was staged on Huashan Mountain's western peak.
Titled XSO Meets Huashan Mountain Summit Clouds Rhapsody, the concert featured more than 200 musicians from the Xi'an orchestra and its chorus under the baton of Tang Muhai and received a warm feedback from fans online.
Qin Zhifeng, music director of the Xi'an Symphony Orchestra, will conduct the concerts at the NCPA.
