CHEN, Yi - From Old Peking Folklore

Описание: Xenia DEVIATKINA-LOH, violin
Xiao CHEN, piano
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Composer: CHEN, Yi (b. 1953)
Composition: From Old Peking Folklore (2009)

Commissioned by the “Friends of Today’s Music” program of the Music Teachers’ Association of California, my violin and piano duet FROM OLD PEKING FOLKLORE is completed in 2009, and premiered by the students on July 5, 2009 at the MTAC convention in Santa Clara, CA. I have spent 8 years studying composition in Beijing about 30 years ago. When I went back to visit the city, and toured the newly opened Capital Museum in recent years, I couldn’t help smiling when I saw everything shown in the exhibition which is so familiar to me. It reminds me the folk music in the area, Jing Yun Da Gu, which is a kind of musical story telling, accompanied by a drum (played by the singer), which leads a small Chinese instrumental ensemble (the music is played in the style of the “speaking” singing). I used the musical language in the creation of my duet, in which the violin solo part has imitated the fingering, the bowing, the style and the spirit of the Chinese traditional music and the instruments. Combining with the piano accompaniment, my duet sounds like a short story told and sung in the form of the old Jing Yun Da Gu.

— Dr. Chen Yi

A prolific composer who transcends cultural and musical boundaries, DR. CHEN YI is Distinguished Professor in the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory, and a recipient of Ives Living Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. Her music is published by Theodore Presser, performed and recorded worldwide. Degrees are from Beijing Central Conservatory of Music and Columbia University in NYC. Composition teachers were Wu Zu-qiang, Chou Wen-chung and Mario Davidovsky. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts & Letters, also a Distinguished Visiting Professor in China. 

— Dr. Chen Yi