MUSIC REVIEW
Soloist, players in orchestra sparkle
By Ruth O. Bingham
The Honolulu Symphony's innovative East-West program Friday night proved to be a rousing success.
With the Honolulu Symphony, part of the Halekulani MasterWorks classical series 4 p.m. today Blaisdell Concert Hall $16, $28, $33, $44, $59 792-2000
Tang Jun Qiao gave a stunning performance on the di, or dizi (pronounced "ditzu," not "ditzy"), a Chinese flute with a vibrating bamboo membrane that gives the instrument its characteristic buzzing tone. The di has a warmer sound than the Western flute, a sound redolent of wind and wood. As in nature, its beauty lies not just in the notes themselves, but in the nuances between.
Tang Jun Qiao
Tang, probably best known to Western audiences by her featured performance in the soundtrack of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," displayed a gorgeous tone and amazing control. Her performance was exceptionally expressive, using a wide variety of techniques: controlled vibratos, flutter-tonguing, bending pitches, slides, key tapping, percussive releasing ... the effects were mesmerizing.
The works Tang presented revealed different characters, each surpassing the last in brilliance.
"Wilderness" by Yang Qing was a haunting work, described by Tang (via Maestro Samuel Wong) as "a wilderness of the mind ... a fever of the spirit." Zhou Cheng Long's "Hanging the Red Lanterns" (not a reference to the film), depicted a rollicking celebration, rather like a Chinese hoe-down. And "Flying Song" by Guo Ming was a display piece, beginning with lush melodies and ending in a (vivace) cascade of notes.
Tang's encore topped them all, mimicking various birds through remarkably realistic chirping, twittering and calls.
The Chinese works were framed by contrasting perspectives of Western art music: Stravinsky, who composed like a painter, with wild, colorful, infectiously rhythmic music; and Hindemith, who composed like an inspired professor, carefully structuring music peppered with learned wit.
Stravinsky's symphonic poem "Song of the Nightingale" tone-painted a Hans Christian Andersen tale of a dying Chinese emperor cured by a nightingale, using musical language so vivid as to be almost visual. His was a kind of film music for the imagination.
Hindemith's "Symphonic Metamorphoses," justifiably one of his most popular works, transformed "Chinese" themes (of questionable parentage) through various symphonic techniques such as instrumental choirs, fugues, counterpoint and marches.
Both composers had a knack for drawing as much attention to the musicians as to their music. In the performance Friday night, the orchestra shone.
In the Stravinsky, flutist Susan McGinn and violinist Ignace Jang soared as the live nightingale, oboist Scott Janusch and English horn Jason Sudduth enchanted as the mechanical one, and trumpeter Mark Schubert cradled the fisherman's song.
In the Hindemith, despite occasionally muddled voicing and pedantic fugues, both soloists and sections delivered gems: clarinetist Scott Anderson in the third movement, the violas in the first, both Janusch and McGinn again, timpanist Stuart Chafetz throughout — all capped by an ending climax of the heroic march theme featuring the horns, led by principal George Warnock.
