Advanced Search

The story appears on

Page A4_5

July 22, 2023

GET this page in PDF

Free for subscribers

View shopping cart

Related News

Home » Events

MISA closes with ‘Yellow River Concerto’

By Yao Minji | 00:00 UTC+8 July 22, 2023 | Print Edition

THE 2023 Music in the Summer Air (MISA) festival concluded on Thursday with familiar melodies that many Chinese grew up singing in school and watching on TV.

The concluding event featured 82-year-old pianist Yin Chengzong, whose slightly quivering steps onto the stage and astonishingly stable hands on the piano wowed many in the concert hall and those watching the livestream.

Yin, one of the composers of the famous “Yellow River Concerto,” first performed the piece in 1970. On Thursday evening, Yin performed the concerto once again with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra.

“I used to play with the symphony in the 1980s, and whenever I returned to Shanghai, I’d see some of my classmates playing here,” Yin told Shanghai Daily.

“Now they are the children or even the grandchildren of my classmates,” Yin said, adding some of the musicians are nearly 60 years his junior.

“We didn’t expect the concerto to be so popular and heard by so many people for so many years. I still receive copyright notifications every year. It has been performed in over 50 countries.”

In 1969, Yin and a group of musicians re-arranged the “Yellow River Cantata” created by Xian Xinghai in 1939 during China’s war against Japanese invaders.

The concerto gained worldwide fame when the Philadelphia Orchestra became the first American orchestra to visit the People’s Republic of China in September 1973 and performed the concerto, also featuring Yin on piano, under the baton of Eugene Ormandy.

A year earlier, Yin performed “Home on the Range,” a composition from Richard Nixon’s hometown, for the then-US President on his historic visit to China.

“The creative process of the concerto never ended,” Yin said. “The way and emotions of playing this piece evolve.”

He used the example of the second movement, which features the opening motif from the Chinese National Anthem with the lyrics “Stand Up.”

“When we played it back then, there was a feeling and hope of ‘standing up.’ Now, we have stood up,” he stated proudly.

Praises came pouring in. The New York Times, after a concert in 1983, said in its review that Yin “blazed through the piano part with utter abandon and virtuosity.”

On Thursday, the second half of the concert featured well-known songs such as “Let us Swing the Oars — Listen to Mum’s Stories.” It was originally created as the theme song for the 1955 children’s film “Flowers of Our Motherland.” The song, with its catchy melodies and poetic lyrics, has outlasted the film and has been sung by generations of Chinese youngsters.

The concluding concert capped off a festival that had reached out to even more people this year, with additional outdoor venues and young singers performing in major city landmarks.
MISA drew over 26,000 live audiences to its two indoor and two outdoor venues over the course of two weeks.

“MISA is a music party in Shanghai,” said Zhou Ping, head of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. “We hope that both Shanghai residents and visitors have derived joy and affection from the classic music festival.”

Events


 

Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.

沪公网安备 31010602000204号

Email this to your friend