iSING! and the Philadelphians premiere Mason Bates’s ‘Spring River Flowers by Moonlight’ in Beijing

ChinaChina Various – Echoes of Ancient Tang Poems: iSING! Soloists, The Philadelphia Orchestra / Marin Alsop (conductor). National Center for the Performing Arts, Beijing, 2.11.2024. (RP)

Baritone José Rubio with The Philadelphia Orchestra © Todd Rosenberg

iSING! Ensemble: Maureen Kelly, Imola Lídia Máté, Juliet Petrus, Anne-Marine Suire, Deborah Solange Martinez (sopranos), Erica Cortese (mezzo-soprano), Alex Aldren, Thomas Glenn, Aaron Scarberry (tenors), Bryan Murray, José Rubio, Valdis Jansons, Zhengzhong Zho (baritones)

Brahms Variations on a Theme by Haydn, Op.56a
Maishuo Luo – Drink to Me’
Sam Wu – Quiet Thoughts by Night’
Evan Mack – Up on the Crane Tower’
Tomàs Peire-Serrate – Bamboo Shoots’
Roydon Hoi Chak Tse – Yellow Crane Tower’
Conrad Asman – Drinking Song’
Mason Bates – Spring River Flowers by Moonlight’ (World Premiere)

Traditional Chinese poetry may seem an unlikely springboard for a collaboration between The Philadelphia Orchestra and the iSING! Festival. Nonetheless, they have been the building blocks of a musical partnership that culminated in Echoes of Ancient Tang Poems which has been performed in Philadelphia, New York and, now. Beijing.

Echoes of Ancient Tang Poems is a collection of fifteen settings (and growing) of Tang dynasty poems in Mandarin by young composers from around the world, in arrangements for solo voices, mixed vocal ensemble and orchestra. Six of them were performed at this concert in conjunction with The Philadelphia Orchestra’s current tour of China under the baton of Marin Alsop.

The evening opened with Brahms’s Variations on a Theme by Haydn, the musical equivalent of an amuse-bouche. The orchestra’s sound was lush and full, with Alsop consistently maintaining an air of stately elegance. The horns sounded wonderful in the first variation, and the final one was a model of clarity and crispness of articulation in the myriad forms of counterpoint that Brahms employed.

Maishuo Luo’s setting of Li Bai’s ‘Drink to Me’ was the first of the six selections from Echoes of Ancient Tang Poems. Li Bai was one of the greatest Tang dynasty poets, and ‘Drink to Me’ is typical of his paeans to drink, adventure, nature and nostalgia. It began with impassioned spoken passages recited by the singers and culminated in the offering of a song. After short solos by mezzo-soprano Erica Cortese and baritones José Rubio and Brian Murray, the entire ensemble joined the orchestra in a sweeping, glorious outpouring of melody and emotion that captured the essence and exuberance of Li Bai’s poem.

‘Quiet Thoughts by Night’ – perhaps Li Bai’s most famous poem – expresses a longing for home on a crisp, moonlit night. The appeal of Sam Wu’s setting is his delicate, shimmering instrumental writing above which baritone Zhengzhong Zhou alternately declaimed and sang the poem. Alsop drew the same sensitivity and beauty from the orchestra as Zhengzhong Zhou did with his voice.

Only six of Wang Zhihuan’s poems survive, of which ‘Up on the Crane Tower’ is the best known. Evan Mack’s masterful setting captures a man’s yearning to ascend in his position in life as analogized by the climbing of a tower to gain a better view of the river below. José Rubio’s baritone is as noble as the indomitable spirit expressed in the poet’s words and composer’s music. The song’s more wistful sentiments were perfectly captured in Rubio’s particularly fine sotto voce singing.

Tomàs Peire-Serrate’s evocative setting of Liu Yuxi’s ‘Bamboo Shoots’ tells of a girl musing on the voice of a young man heard singing in the distance. Juliet Petrus’s lyric soprano shimmered in Peire-Serrate’s soaring lines which conjured the excitement and anticipation of the unknown. Those emotions were expressed with even more fervor in the music for the entire ensemble and orchestra.

‘Yellow Crane Tower’ is a poem by Cui Hao based upon a Taoist legend of a man carried into the heavens riding on a yellow crane. The legend is immortalized in a tower situated high above the Yangtze River in Wuhan. Roydon Hoi Chak Tse communicated the magic and nostalgia inherent in the poem in his atmospheric writing for the vocal ensemble and orchestra. Tenor Thomas Glenn was heroic in his narration of the tale, and Zhengzhong Zhou’s equal in the lyrical expression of nostalgia for one’s homeland.

Rubio returned to sing Conrad Asman’s ‘Drinking Song’. The poem by Wang Han expresses the bonhomie of soldiers preparing for battle and gaining the fortitude to face their destinies with wine drunk from glittering jade goblets. Asman’s setting captures the poem’s complex emotions with music that is forthright and bold, and Rubio sang with a singular combination of bravura and irony.

Composer Mason Bates with soprano Maureen Kelly and conductor Marin Alsop © Todd Rosenberg

The final work was the world premiere of Mason Bates’s ‘Spring River Flowers by Moonlight’ for soprano, baritone and orchestra, commissioned for this concert. Bates has garnered critical and popular acclaim for The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, and is currently working on The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, with a libretto by Gene Scheer, for the Metropolitan Opera

‘Spring River Flowers by Moonlight’, one of only two extant poems by Zhang Ruoxu, is an extraordinary description of the moonlit Yangtze River intertwined with a lament on love and the transitory nature of human existence. Bates captured the poem’s sentiments in subtle and scintillating musical gestures. Glockenspiel, vibraphone and celeste provided the sensations of shimmering moonlight as well as a river’s flow. When the poet described fishes and dragons leaping in the water, it was captured miraculously in the music.

Bates expressed the sorrow and longing in the poem in carefully crafted vocal lines that caressed the voice. Maureen Kelly’s lush soprano soared above the orchestra as she expressed the allure of nature and the yearning for a love far away. Valdis Jansons’s commanding baritone expressed longing and love for the maiden he left behind when he went to war with eloquence.

For an encore, iSING! and the orchestra performed ‘From Jasmine to Turandot’, arranged by Maishuo Luo. The piece begins with a Chinese folk song, ‘Mo Li Hua’, sung first by mezzo-soprano Erica Cortese and then by soprano Maureen Kelly. It ends in triumph as the simple melody evolves into Puccini’s setting of it in Turandot, which was performed by all the singers and the full orchestra.

Rick Perdian

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