Archive for the ‘music’ Category

a beautiful night with a chamber concert

Friday, September 30th, 2005

Europe is Europe.

Tonight I walked to Karlskirche for a chamber concert. All the musicians are from my tiny town Zweibrücken, names never heard, but their superb performance and charming temperament conquered me entirely. I start to believe nowadays so-called fame is a result of marketing, especially when it comes to music/art. I love this tiny town so much more after this concert. It’s not that I never had any live concerts. Quite the contrary, I grew up with classmates playing violins, violoncellos, pianos and other instruments (western and/or Chinese) around and my high school was the first high school which had student orchestra in my province. For a few years I myself was singing western chorus works or playing my instrument in rehearsals several times a week. The Chinese American pianist Xiang-Dong Kong once came to my college to give speech/performance and I was there. Yo-Yo Ma and Lang-Lang’s performances are just familiar through CDs and TV programmes….But never did I have such soulful/beautiful musical experience before.

The first piece was Brahms’ Trio H-Dur op. 8, 1. Satz Allegro con brio. Mr. Martin Ruppert, the violin player, tall and thin, looked shy. The notes flowing out of his fingers were simply seductive. No big body movements or exaggerating expressions on face, he was rather implicit and well, the music was simply delicate and seductive. I call it temperament. The performance and demeanour of the violoncello player Mr. Joachim Köhler was gorgeous. Let’s not talk about technical thing, in tonight’s concert I just felt all the technical things faded away, sheer beauty of music and tender emotion haunting around….It was just elegant temperament. Europe is Europe. Please accept my adoration. I never really liked Brahms but their performance definitely opened my new door to Brahms.

Then the mezzo soprano Ms Susanne Ludwig-Theisohn sang Arie “Holdes Echo” from J. S. Bach’s “Die Wahl des Herakles” BWV 213. (Echo: Ms Ina Buhr). Very solid yet gentle mid range. Again, implicit and controlled. Quite noble in my ears.

Things became a little bit dramatic when the flute player Mr. Nicole Wagner started Gabriel Faure’s “Fantasie e-moll”. It was a beautiful piece, and Mr. Wagner’s dance was elegant too. :)

The Dvorak they played was “Dumky-Trio” Op. 90. 4. Satz “Die Uhr” Andante moderato. I hoped for Dvorak’s Op. 96, but still greatly enjoyed Mr. Ruppert, Mr. Köhler and Mr. Klaus Bernhard Roth’s performance. Dvorak is not really that easy to interpret. His untrammelled passion is too easy to be turned out rather simple and coarse. These three gentlemen did a great job. The heat was certainly there but everything was under control, not countrysideman-like. Very European.

The concert ended with Brahms’ Kalviertrio H-Dur Op. 90, 4. Satz: Finale, Allegro. All the musicians were highly acclaimed then. I walked home in a dreamy mood.

Till now the music is still haunting. What a beautiful night I had had and what a lovely tiny town I am living in!

The Karlskirche has an excellent acoustic characteristic for chamber music (better than the Fruchthalle in Kaiserslautern, IMHO), that definitely helped the concert sound more charming. It should be suitable for a wedding too (suppose the music in the wedding is chamber music too….no, Karlskirche is not really for Wanger’s massive works). I’m seriously considering looking for a local man so that maybe I can have my wedding there and attend concerts there as many times as I want to. :D

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concert in Sunday evening and others

Wednesday, September 28th, 2005

In the evening of Sep. 25th, ministry of national defense band of Korea gave a concert in Festhalle, and I visited it. This band is in a tour in Germany, already gave highly applauded performances in Berlin, Hannover, etc.

The first part of the concert were Korean drums and traditional music. The Korean drums were spectacular to view. The drum beaters were all in colourful Korean traditional costumes, the movement of their arms were carefully designed and coordinated with each other, just like a group dancing of arms. Their heads shaked with the rhythms too. The handsome young men looked really cool. It was a terrific visual experience. As for the sound, it’s surely exotic/exciting enough for westerners but for me, the sound of Korean drums is a little too “thin”, compared to Chinese traditional drums. The strength of the beats did vary from ppppp to fffff, but I was surprised how monotonous the rhythms were. There also lacked prodigious bass and treble in the sound. I guess maybe the stage of the Festhalle of Zweibrücken is too small so they couldn’t place really big drums onto it. Here I share two excellent pieces of Chinese drums, they are a little bit similar to the pieces I heard on Sunday, but acoustically much richer/better (just my humble opinion):

They are both from the audiophile CD “Drums of Jiangzhou II”. If you like it please buy the high-quality legal CD.

The traditional Korean instruments I saw in the concert were very similar to some of Chinese instruments. I don’t mean to brag about our traditional instruments but objectively speaking, our instruments have better acoustic characteristics than theirs. (In another blog entry I said western instruments have better acoustic characteristics than Chinese instruments). The pieces of tube instruments I heard on Sunday evening were not only plain boring but also the sound was sooooo piercing. Zheng is an instrument I like very much. If well played, this 21-String instrument is anything but boring. However the performance of Zheng I listened on Sunday was as boring as a practice session of a first-year pupil. Below is an example piece of Zheng. Interestingly, it’s from a New-Age album, this piece is quite vigorous and interesting. I don’t have outstanding traditional Zheng pieces in my computer for now, once I get any, I’ll update this entry and offer the sample listening.

The second part of the concert became interesting to me. A western orchestra (musicians are all from the Korean band) came out. The performance of the ochestra was not really impressive, however the guest vocalist they invited from the Karlsruher Staatsoper Miss Kim Sang-Hee was an absolute charm that night. The first piece she sang was Puccini’s “O mio babbino caro”. This piece is one of the most popular opera pieces in the world, hundreds of records out there and I’ve heard quite a few, some sung by top vocalists from Spain, Italy….I completely fell for Miss Kim’s voice as soon as the first syllable arrived at my ear. The voice was soooo incredibly silky and the interpretation was full of emotion, dreamingly beautiful and feminine, honestly better than any record I have heard! Festhalle was very small so she didn’t use any microphone, so the voice is even truer. The second song she sang was a Korean one, I had no clue what was the lyrics all about but still greatly enjoyed Miss Kim’s voice. She was in a long red evening dress, wearing long black hair and big, shiny jewels. Beautiful!

After Miss Kim the music was less impressive again. They played some pieces which were intended to present the beauty of “when eastern music meets western music”. I didn’t know whether it was that the music was not well composed or it was that the music was not well interpreted by the band, it appeared boring to me. It just reminded me the rehearsal sessions of the student orchestra in my high school. The most confusing thing was that there were even inaccurate pitches from certain tube instrument. I guess the whole band was not at their peak status when they were playing on Sunday.

The concert ended at around 20:30 and I walked home after that. All in all I had a great visual experience and yeah, Miss Kim Sang-Hee’s performance was an unforgettable highlight. I’m now a big fan of Miss Kim, Karlsuher is not that far away, hope I will have many chances to listen to her again.

A bit off the topic: speaking of “eastern western music”, we’ve got something really good. Here is a piece by Prof. Xiling Wang, one of the most talented composers around today. Sadly Prof. Wang is now kind of in prison (I heard it from a website, don’t know whether it’s true or not) because of his opinions on Chinese politics. For this matter I hate the Chinese authorities. What are they afraid of? Prof. Wang is only a musician, he is not able to hurt the power of authorities merely by his music! And the authorities don’t know how precious Prof. Wang’s talent is….SET PROF. WANG FREE AND LET HIM COMPOSE MORE MUSIC!!!

This piece is from Prof. Wang’s work “Symphonic Suite Yunnan Tone Poem“. This symphonic suite won the first place in the national composition competition in 1981. At that time, Mr. Xiling Wang was still a college student. You can hear the young passion and talent of a great composer from this piece.

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Die Beerdigung der Blumen

Wednesday, August 3rd, 2005

“Die Beerdigung der Blumen” is the German version of a poem in the greatest Chinese long novel Dream of the Red Chamber which was written in 18th century. In the novel this poem is composed by the main character Miss Daiyu Lin. Daiyu lost her mother when she was six and then lived with her grandmother, whose family is one of the most prosperous and rich in the capital city of China (at that time). Born extremely sensitive, beautiful, intelligent and physically sickness-prone, Daiyu composed many tearfully sentimental poems in the novel. She fell in love with her cousin Baoyu Jia, but mainly due to her extreme defensive way of thinking and extreme sensitivity, her love is full of sorrow/worry/anxiety most of the time. This novel consists of more than a million words so it’s really impossible to summarize it in several sentences. Because of many really complicated causalities, Daiyu died in despair of love when she was still 16 or 18 (I’m not sure how old she was when she died). In short this novel is the best (not one of the best) novel I’ve read in my short life. Undescribably beautiful, in many aspects. (I did read quite a few foreign novel works….for German ones, I fell for Stefan Zweig’s Brief einer Unbekannte(Chinese version) when I was 15 or 16….) Compared to whatever I have read, Dream of the Red Chamber has the greatest aesthetic power. (Just my humble opinion)

This poem, Die Beerdigung der Blumen, die Beerdigung der Blumenwas written after Daiyu buring some fallen flowers into earth. The fallen flowers in the late spring brought much sentiments to the sensitive Daiyu. She was saying to the fallen flowers: “…Today you died with the unspoilt purity, I know not when would I die; Today I’m here buring you, who would be there buring me when I die?….” The original poem is beautifully sorrowful and musical, with many exquisite and great images. I saw this Germany translation by accident on the ‘net today, was a little bit amused….well, it’s proven again that poems can hardly be translated (R. M. Rilke’s poems are rare exceptions. Some Chinese translations of his poems are surprisingly deep, thorough and beautiful). I can sense the translator is trying very, very hard. If doing from scratch, I myself cannot do as 1/10 as well as she/he does. She/he is doing best to keep the German text literally loyal to the original. However sometimes the literal loyalty appears just funny in another language (German)….Too late now and I need to sleep, today I just copy&paste the original translation. I’ll try to modify it (if I really can) in a more meaning-loyal manner later when I get chance. There are many typos in the current version, I’ll correct them later.

An excellent piece of music was composed for this poem by Mr. Liping Wang in 1987. It’s marvelously harmonic with the sentiment in the poem. To have a good sense of the origin, you can download the music (mp3 format, 8.7 mb) here.

Die Beerdigung der Blumen

Ãœbersetzer: Lang Lu

Alle Blumen sind bereits verwelkt, die Kronblaetter
fliegen am ganzen Himmel. Die feuerrote Farbe ist
schon verschwunden, ebenso wie der duftende Geruch.
Aber wer hat Mitleid mit ihnen?

Vor einem auf der Hoehe stehenden Pavilion haengt
die Weidenrute kraftlos und tanzt im Wind. Die
Weidenkaetzchen sind heruntergefallen und kleben
leicht am Stickvorhang.

Maedchen im Boudoir hat Angst vor dem Ende des
Fruehlings, im Herzen voller Kummer weiss sie nicht,
wo sie sie rauslassen soll.

Mit der Blumenhacke in der Hand habe ich das
Frauengemach verlassen. Obwohl ich es nicht uebers
Herz bringe, ging ich auf den gefallenen Blumen auf
und ab.

Die Weidenzweige und die sibirischen Ulmen
verbreiten ihren Duft. Sie kuemmern sich nicht um
schwebende Pfirsichbluehten und fliegende
Pflaumenblumen.

Pfirsich- und Pflaumenbluehten werden im naechsten
Jahr wieder bluehen. Aber niemand weiss, wer im
naechsten Jahr noch im Boudoir sein wird.

Das duftende Nest ist schon im Maerz gebaut. Die
auf dem Dachbalken lebenden Schwalben sind so
herzlos, sie kuemmern sich wirklich ueberhaubt
nicht um die schwebende Blumen.

Im naechsten Jahr, wenn die Blumen bluehen, kommen
die Schwalben wieder, um Schlamm zu picken. Aber
da sind die Menschen vielleicht schon gegangen. Der
Dachbalken ist leer und das Nest aus jener Zeit ist
schon laengst runtergefallen.

Dreihundertfuenfundsechzig Tage in einem Jahr, der
Wind wie Messer und Frost wie Schwert, zwingen sie
die Blumen.

Wie lange kann die stralende Schoenheit der Blumen
dauern? Wenn sie gefallen sind, dann sind sie sehr
schwer zu finden.

Waehrend die Blumen bluehen, kann jeder sie sehen.
Aber wenn sie gefallen sind, sind sie fast
unauffindbar. Dies macht mir, der auf dem Stufen
stehende, die Blumen beerdigende Mensch,
grenzenlose Truebsal.

Allein, mich an der Blumenhacke lehnend, weine ich
heimlich. Das auf den blumenlosen Aesten
verspritzte Traenenwasser hat Blutspuren
hinterlassen.

Der Kuckuck singt nicht mehr, es ist schon
Abenddaemerung. Ich kehre heim, die Kacke tragend
und schloss jede Tuer zu.

Das Lampenlicht scheint schwach auf der Wand. Ich
bin gerade eingeschlafen. Der kalte Regen klopft
am Fenster, selbst in Decken gewickelt, ist es
nicht warm.

Angenommen, man fragt mich nach dem Grund meiner
Traurigkeit. Ein Teil ist mein Hochschaetzen vom
Fruehling und ein anderer Teil ist der Aerger
ueber ihn.

Ich schaetze das lautlose Kommen des Fruehlings,
hasse aber sein heimliches Verlassen. Er kommt
ohne etwas zu sagen und geht ohne sich zu
verabschieden.

Gestern Abend hoerte ich ausserhalb des Gartens
ein trauriges Lied. Keine Ahnung, ob die Geister
der Blumen oder die Geister der Voegel gesungen
haben.

Egal, ob Blumengeister oder Voegelgeister, sie
werden hier nicht verweilen. Voegel sprechen
nicht und Blumen haben ihre Kronblaetter
geschlossen.

Ich wuenschte wirklich, mir wuerden an den Seiten
zwei Fluegel wachsen. Mit den Blumen fliege ich an
die Grenze des Himmels.

Selbst wenn ich an der Grenze des Himmels
angekommen waere, wo sollte ich den duftenden
Geruch verbreiteten Erdhuegel suchen?

Besser bewahre ich meine edlen Knochen in einer
Seidentasche und mit einem Haufen saubere Erde
stuetze ich meine Begabung.

Weil ich mit einem sauberen Koerper gekommen bin,
gehe ich deshalb auch sauber. Es ist immerhin
besser als mit Dreck am ganzen Koerper in einem
Teich steckenzubleiben.

Heute bist du gestorben und ich beerdige ich, aber
selbst weiss ich noch nicht, wann ich sterben werde.

Wenn ich heute die Blumen beerdige, werden die
Menschen mich auslachen und fuer toericht halten.
Weiss nicht, wer mich spater beerdigen wird.

Sieh dir den Anblick des Fruehlingendes und des
leichten Fallen der Blumen an. Er ist genauso wie
der Anblick des zukunftigen Aelterns und Sterbens
einer jetzigen juengeren Frau.

Wenn der Fruehling vorbei ist, wird die junge Frau
schon alt und schwach. Dann kommt der Augenblick,
wo die Blumen verwelkt sind und die Frau tot ist,
und keiner von den beiden sich um den anderen
kuemmert.

Posted in essay, music, poem | 1 Comment »

Piano: with Tenderness

Thursday, March 24th, 2005

Can’t remember how long ago did I have the tender feelings of April breeze, on a half-dark yet cristal clear morning.

Code is code, after all. My passion for bits and bytes is fragile. Tired. Bored. And the crazy punky rocky music from other appartments in this dorm area only drove me tireder and more bored.

Video player turned on. It was the random file I came up with: a 10-episode Japanese cartoon called Piano. It was like an unspoken dream lost many years ago now became tangible. I had such crushes deep down in heart for every character in this cartoon.

Story is pretty simple: An 8th grade pupil Nomura Miyu was on her 6th year of learning playing piano from her instructor Mr. Shirakawa Sensei. Miyu’s best girlfriend Yuuki Chan fell for a boy at 9th grade and simultaneously Miyu started to have an eye on another boy at 9th grade. Two little girls started to exchange their feelings and developed deeper friendship. Miyu’s piano instructor had been hiding his love for Miyu’s elder sister Akiko for long, however Akiko works as a tour guide in Europe so they seldom have any chance to meet up. Shirakawa trains Miyu in his unconventional way which brought huge stress and depression to Miyu, for a while Miyu wanted to quit playing piano. However that was the very right way for Miyu. Miyu’s character got molt and finally managed to perform her real self in front of the people she love in a recital. Shortly before Miyu’s performance, her instructor met Akiko, who came back for her younger sister’s recital and told he’d start his destination-unknown trip over the world, he and Akiko hope they would came across each other some where, maybe in a narrow lane maybe in front of an acient stone wall.

It’s numerous exquisite details therein makes this cartoon sooooooo heart touching. Both Shirakawa Sensei and Nomura Miyu are very introvert but have rich and delicate feelings and strong passions underneath. Both of them are pretty cumbersome in words, piano is their tool to express themselves. One day Miyu’s cat got lost in the neighbourhood and Shirakawa sent it to Miyu. Normally this cat has big fear towards strangers but she slept well in Shirakawa’s arm, which indicated that Shirakawa in fact appears very often near Miyu’s home, if not everyday. However till the end of the cartoon, this fact kept unspoken. Shirakawa’s a top-notch young pianist with handsome appearance. Even his lack of words makes him appear cooler. These facts conquered many young girls’ hearts and they want to switch to Shirakawa’s class. But Shirakawa turned them down no matter how hard the other girls try. Superficially, he’s seldom nice to Miyu, frowns all the time, throws really harsh critiques at Miyu once in a while. However in fact his existence in that music school is solely for Miyu, who is Akiko’s younger sister. He knows Miyu too well and he has his way. One day Akiko was stressed out from work and escaped to home for a short vacation. She sent Miyu to her piano class and the two sisters said goodbye to each other in the taxi. Shirakawa saw it through the window of the classroom. When Miyu entered the classroom, surprisinglly her instructor was sitting in front of the piano and asked Miyu to listen: “Sometimes to listen is part of learning.” Then, a stunningly beautiful and passionate piece started to glow. Akiko heard it in the departing taxi, with a deep smile on her face. Akiko flied back to work right the second day. She called Shirakawa from Europe, asked him to take good care of her only sister. Shirakawa knew not what to say. Air frozen. His fingers started to dance on his knee, even though the knee is not a piano. Ach what romantic silence and what exquisite details! There are too many such details in the 10 serials (each serial lasts for 24 minutes), each character is lovely and has their unique style. Dialogs are never too much, every and each word counts 120%. It’s such a wonderful enjoyment to watch this cartoon. The most beautiful thing in this cartoon is, till the end everything remained unspoken. I think Akiko and Shirakawa in fact knew well about each other’s feelings but they kept it unspoken. Miyu’s prince-in-dream appeared in her recital, there was such bright glow in Miyu’s eyes! However when Miyu’s performance starts, the whole serial ends. Keats’ poem said Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter, one gets exactly what Keats’ means from the Piano cartoon. Imagination flies and boundless tenderness hovers around me, hour after hour.

Nowadays Japanese cartoons are easily got popular. Even a big German TV station (forget which) sends Japanese cartoons during the whole afternoon everyday for the children. But to my surprise, when I tried to google for more information, there was no clue for such a by-any-standard master piece. It reminds one the warmth of life and how pure and deep the love and friendship could possibly be. I know I’m going to watch it again and again. And I’m going to play it for my children.

The piece Miyu plays often in this cartoon is Waltz No. 7, Op. 64, No. 2 by Frederic Chopin. Beautiful. Each episode ends with a song with the lyrics below:

The capricious way today’s sky is…
It’s moving a little, just like me.
My friends all seem adult
Will I too, some day?
Listen to the sound of my heart…
However faint and unreliable it may be,
It can only be heard now.
To make someone smile,
I send it with my prayers.

Posted in drivel, essay, life, music, video review | No Comments »