A Chinese Anthology
Wendy Kweh (reader)
David Yip (reader)
Producer's Note
In literary terms, Emperor Qin Shi Huang has a lot to answer for. As well as unifying China, undertaking modest building projects such as The Great Wall of China, the foundations of the Chinese national road system and the Terracotta Army, he also decreed the burning of all but a few books. So, thanks to Qin Shi Huang the poems in today's programme only span 2,000 years or so. However, I think we'll manage ok.
Ninth Century poet Po Chu-i is a relative latecomer. Wendy Kweh reads his beautifully evocative "Island of Pines", a dreamy, nocturnal evocation of a willow-lake with dark boats bringing "scented stores of orange seed". David Yip reads another Po Chu-i offering: "After Getting Drunk, Becoming Sober in the Night", alcohol seemingly a common preoccupation among chinese poets. Su shi lifts a glass of it to the luminous moon in his "Prelude to the Water Song". Apparently, as well as being a major poet of the Song Dynasty he also counted writer, poet, artist, calligrapher, pharmacologist, and statesman among his activities. "Love may last without end," he writes, "since even a thousand miles apart we can share this full moon."
Liu Zongyuan is particularly known for his fables featuring animals. River Snow, read by David Yip, is a beautiful example of the style of 'minimum words, maximum message'. I subjected the simple poem to an audio treatment, which I hope enhances its simplicity.
Separation and loss are so frequently explored by Chinese poets that sometimes it is hard to find a poem in which someone isn't waiting for someone else at the foot of a mountain, or so it seems. Du Fu is known as the Chinese Shakespeare (also the Chinese Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Shakespeare, Milton, Burns, Wordsworth, Beranger, Hugo or Baudelaire). Whatever the truth of that, I found his "Dreaming of Li Bai" an achingly beautiful expression of separation across endless roads in an age where there is neither telephone nor text.
Musically, I have mixed Chinese classical and folk music with impressionistic masterpieces such as Debussy's Pagodes and Des pas sur la neige (the latter piano piece morphing, some way in, into a synthesised version.) Mahler makes an appearance, as do Stravinsky, Hindemith, Ellington and others. I hope you enjoy the mix.
Paul Frankl (producer)
Playlist
00:00:00
Sweet Tangerines
Read by David Yip and Wendy Kweh
00:00:40
Go to the Fair
Plucked Instruments Ensemble
RETRO 2X607
CD 1
Track 11
00:03:45
Island of Pines
Read by Wendy Kweh
00:04:45
Debussy arr. Grainger
Pagodes
Philharmonia
Geoffrey Simon, conductor
CALA CACD1001
Track 13
00:10:05
Trad.
Spring Flowers in the Moonlit Night on the River
Fan Wei, pipa
Lang Lang, piano
DG002896229
Track 12
00:10:30
To the tune of
"Prelude to the Water Song"
Read by David Yip
00:16:25
Song of Zhanggan village
Read by Wendy Kweh
00:18:00
Ravel
Laideronette, Empress of the Pagodas
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Charles Munch, conductor
RCA GD86522
Track 10
00:21:50
River Snow
Read by David Yip
00:22:30
Debussy
Des Pas Sur la neige (Preludes, Book 1)
Krystian Zimerman, piano
DG 435 773 2
CD 1
Track 6
00:25:00
Debussy arr. Tomita
Des Pas Sur la neige (Preludes, Book 1)
Tomita, synthesisers
RCA RD 84587
Track 10
00:26:09
For the courtesan Ching Lin
Read by David Yip
00:27:32
Trad. arr. Cao Wengong
Love Embroidery
Chinese Conservatory National Orchestra
GUMBO CD 033
Track 9
0031:09
Dreaming of Libai
Read by Wendy Kweh
00:31:28
Hindemith
Turandot Scherzo (Symphonic Metamorphoses on a Theme
of Carl Maria von Weber)
Israel Philharmonic Orchestra
Leonard Bernstein, conductor
DG 429 404 2
Track 10
0038:50
On turning 50
Read by David Yip
00:41:00
Tchaikovsky arr. Duke Ellington
Chinoiserie
Duke Ellington and his band
RETROSPECTIVE RET 022
Track 7
00:43:45
Losing myTteeth
Read by David Yip
00:45:15
Mahler
Jeunesse (Das Lied von der Erde)
Thomas Moser, tenor
Czech Philharmonic Orchestra
Vaclav Neumann, conductor
CHAND DU MONDE HM90
Track 3
00:48:15
Fragment
Read by Wendy Kweh
00:48:35
Steve Reich
Drumming
Steve Reich Ensemble
DG 427 428 2
CD 1
Track 3
00:53:23
On the tune "Fall of a Little Wild Goose"
Read by Wendy Kweh
00:54:33
Trad arr. Song Wen
Xiaoma Alley
China Conservatory National Orchestra
GUMBO CD 033
Track 5
00:58:27
My Dressing Mirror is a Humpbacked Cat
Read by Wendy Kweh
00:59:30
Michio Miyagi
Haru no umi
Naoko Yoshino, harp
Gidon Kremer, violin
PHILIPS 456 016 2
Track 1
01:05:25
To the tune of "song of the river town,"
A Record of a Dream on the Night of the First Month,
Twentieth day, in the Eighth Year of the Xining period
Read by David Yip
01:06:00
Zhang Fuquan
Liu Chanfu, erhu
GUMBO CD 033
Track 6
01:11:00
After Getting Drunk, Becoming Sober in the Night
Read by David Yip
01:11:10
Stravinsky
Song of the Nightingale
Philharmonia Orchestra
Constantin Silvestri
D CLASSICS 707512
Track 6
01:16:40
Burning Bright - The Brilliant Moon of Dawn
Read by Wendy Kweh
01:17:10
Trad. arr. Zhu Lin
Cradle Song of Northeast China
Chinese Conservatory National Orchestra
GUMBO CD 033
Track 11
