On January 9^th, the two-year 8^th NCPA Young Composer Programme was rounded off with an award concert.


The Award Concert was presented by the China NCPA Orchestra alongside four young erhu artists under HUANG Yi’s baton. At the concert, final evaluations were conducted live by a mighty panel of judges including LÜ Jia, QIN Wenchen, LIN Daye, Eric Montalbetti, Magnus Lindberg, Pierre Charvet, Stanislav Kochanovsky and Pascal Rophé, who are renowned composers or musical directors or principal conductors of orchestras or music institutions, as well as seven Chinese music experts including erhu artists YU Hongmei, SONG Fei, YAN Jiemin, MA Xianghua and DUAN Aiai, flutist ZHANG Weiliang and guzheng artist CHANG Jing. Qigang Chen, chief judge for the “Programme”, failed to be present due to a health problem, but he listened to the performances and read the musical scores online in real time, evaluating each finalist entry.

Ultimately, the “Top Three Winners” were decided for this session of the “Programme”, as below:

Furthermore, GAO Bai, who played erhu solos in Birds of Sorrow and Joy and Traveling with Zizhan, was voted the “Most Popular Soloist” by the musicians at the China NCPA Orchestra. Between Love and Ignorance was voted the “Most Popular Work” by the seven Chinese music judges.

The “Programme” is an open platform where young composers can compose music whimsically. The Award Concert presented five concertos for the huqin and orchestra. Diversely themed and different in style from one another, they are all rooted in the fertile soil of Chinese culture, yet composed by cutting-edge international techniques, with Chinese and Western musical vocabularies combined organically in them.

Yun Shen, composed by LI Zi’ao, who holds a master’s degree from the Department of Composition of the Central Conservatory of Music, takes its title from a dialect phrase of Hunan Province. The music contains some folk musical elements of Hunan, which have been modified to achieve a flamboyantly dramatic effect, considering that the erhu sounds as if it were intoning when played in a certain way. The erhu and orchestra contrast finely with each other, making the music sound interesting now and soulful then. That’s how language and music are blended together into an inseparable whole.

Between Love and Ignorance, composed by YU Zhongyuan, a doctoral student at the Department of Composition, Central Conservatory of Music, is a composition that weaves through colourful orchestral music along with the melody and tone cluster of the erhu, depicting how life winds its way in the mortal world - it plunges forward on this side, dashes in on that, in constant search of the true self and true love, to finally find the way to a cool realm where “the heart can be set free”.

Birds of Sorrow and Joy, composed by FENG Zihui, a postgraduate student at the Department of Composition, Central Conservatory of Music, is based on a poem of the same title written by MEI Yaocheng, a poet in the Northern Song Dynasty. It depicts the chaos in human emotion, an indescribable undertone of life. The work attempts to analyse the constant adversarial juxtaposition between erhu solo and the orchestra, so as to explore how individual emotion can transcend joy and sorrow in the conventional sense, thus ultimately getting into an undefinable and unutterable state of life.

Traveling with Zizhan, composed by PU Tian, a postgraduate student at the New England Conservatory of Music, majoring in composition, depicts a spiritual journey across time and space on which SU Dongpo, though ill-fated, leads a carefree life by going on a pleasure trip in exile, chanting while stepping forward in the wind and rain, and chatting cheerfully while enjoying lichees in trouble.

Snowy Reverie, composed by Alatanmaoni, who holds a degree in composition and conducting from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, boasts a leading motif - a melody hummed by a herdsman on horseback. The motif is presented in a continuous syncopation, reappearing and varying again and again throughout the piece. The music presents a clear picture of walking in the snow.

Four young erhu artists - ZHANG Haiyue, BI Youheng, GAO Bai and ZHONG Xiaotian - gave masterful renditions of the five concertos with their consummate skills. During the rehearsals, they worked with the composers, conductor and orchestra in deeply exploring these pieces, thereby enriching the modern erhu playing skills. With their efforts, the erhu, a thousand-year-old stringed instrument, takes on a new look on the contemporary stage. Through the NCPA Young Composer Programme, we are able to receive new musical compositions, offer support to young Chinese composers and promote the development of Chinese music. Meanwhile, we can witness the growth of young Chinese soloists and boost the development of Chinese traditional instrumental music.