JIANPING SHENG SHUI-LONG YI PETRI -LONG YI PETRI - CHINESE SACD

SKU/Barcode: 747313160365

The contents of this album are less unusual than the proclaimed Chinese recorder concertos concept. Only one of the four works, Chen Yi's The Ancient Chinese Beauty, is originally written for recorders; the others are arranged from music for Chinese flutes (or, in the case of Bright Sheng's Flute Moon, Western piccolo). Sheng and Chen Yi are partly Western-trained, and their pieces arose in an American context. This said, veteran recorder virtuosa Michala Petri, recording in her home country of Denmark with the Copenhagen Philharmonic under Chinese-Singaporean conductor Lan Shui, delivers a bravura performance here. Chen Yi writes difficult registral jumps for Petri, but elsewhere, as in the low oscillations of the finale of Tang Jianping's Fei Ge (Flying Song), one gets the feeling that Petri has pushed the recorder into new tonguings as she imitates the Chinese dizi bamboo flute. The presence of the Tang Jianping work points to another of the album's strengths: its diverse program. There is a work in the Chinese style familiar to listeners of the Mao Zedong era; Bang di concerto composer Ma Shui-Long is Taiwanese, but as the excellent booklet notes (in English and Chinese, but not Danish) indicate, the official Taiwanese style of that time, intended to provide a counterweight to the Yellow River Concerto being promoted by the mainland government, ended up being similar to it in many ways, because official styles are official styles. This concerto, originally written for the bang di small membrane flute, marked the beginnings of his move away from this style. The biggest find is the Tang Jianping piece, an eventful, kaleidoscopic piece drawing on a variety of Chinese folk traditions and expertly handling the Western orchestra (it was originally composed for a Chinese ensemble but arranged by the composer). The program is truly a "Chinese fugue in four voices," as the booklet proclaims, and mention should be made of the unusually elaborate and nicely edited booklet, complete with Chinese seals. A strong outing from Denmark's new OUR Recordings label, and it is to be hoped that the label will enter the field of cross-cultural repertory that has so far been left mostly to the Netherlands label Channel Classics.