Monday’s Enchanting China concert at Benaroya Hall was thoroughly enjoyable and truly one of a kind in Seattle. With apparently only two concerts scheduled on the West Coast, the China Broadcasting Chinese Orchestra of about 40 musicians performed to a sea of Asian faces in an enthusiastic audience.
For many, the instruments were unfamiliar except for various drums, a couple of cellos, and a couple of double basses. To the left of the conductor, where a Western orchestra would have violins, was a phalanx of erhus, a bowed instrument with a long neck, small oblong body, and two strings. On his right were plucked instruments, two stands of pipas (a pear-shaped fretted instrument), and behind them two stands of flat backed, round-faced ruans. Shengs, the group of upright small pipes held in a bundle and blown like a mouth organ, came in a couple of sizes and there were both transverse and straight-blown flutes of different sizes, horns like small straight trumpets called suoma, many percussion instruments, and more.
The sound of some of them was unfamiliar to Western ears, particularly the bowed instruments. The erhu has a somewhat hooded tone, a bit raw and nasal, played with vibrato and often with an amazingly fast tremolo, while a cousin, the banhu, could sound pure and bell-like.
The differing sounds of the instruments could alone keep a listener fascinated for the length of a performance, but these were top performers, extremely skilled with extraordinary technique. Among other works, they played music from Chinese opera and arrangements of Chinese folk songs, some very ancient, plus one each from Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan, several with solos on pipa, bamboo flute, and erhu, and a some with a dancer.
The first was a man in robes which billowed out fluttering in beautiful shapes as he leapt and twisted. Another represented a peacock, a woman who might have been a contortionist, so smoothly flexible was she as she illustrated the song, and another seemingly a highly ranked lady with exquisite headdress who used her hands and fingers to create a mood, dancing slowly almost by themselves. Both her costume and that of the peacock were beautiful.
For one work, the banhu soloist was joined by the Seattle Symphony’s principal cellist, Efe Baltacigil, apparently substituting at short notice in this concert for the orchestra’s own soloist and blending easily with the Chinese orchestra’s style.
By no means least were the singers. One, Gong Linna, we were told by someone in the row in front, is famous throughout China, and certainly her singing was breathtaking. The style of singing is somewhat nasal, extremely expressive, and with technical achievements by way of very skilled ornamentation and voice production unusual to Western singers. She also wore an exquisite gown.
In total contrast, the male singer, Xue Haoyin, appeared in Western white tie and tails to sing Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma” from Turandot. An Italian-style singer, he could have been another Pavarotti. Not surprisingly, as well as being a member of the China Broadcasting Performing Arts Troupe, he is also a contract artist of England’s Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. The orchestral accompaniment had been arranged for Chinese instruments and came through different-sounding but equally expressive.
All the many works performed had been arranged for the orchestra, some by film composer Brian Tyler, and were conducted with enormous energy by Peng Jiapeng, who has directed performances all over the world.
Unfortunately, programs were in very short supply, and in minute print, impossible to read during the auditorium-darkened performance. I was able to get one in the second half, courtesy of someone in the row in front, but since only the tenor spoke any English, anyone else who didn’t speak the language would have had to do without any guidance as to what was going on. Throughout the performance, a large screen overhead projected idyllic scenes of China in a Thomas-Kinkade style. The audience demanded two encores and seemed set to ask for many more, so that the performance was still going on when I left after nearly two-and-a-half hours.
