A Lover's Concerto

Rising star violinist Chloe Chua presents a recording combining Chen Gang and He Zhanhao’s Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto with Niccolò Paganini’s First Violin Concerto, performed together with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Rodolfo Barráez and Mario Venzago. The Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto was written in 1959, and inspired by a tale often called the Romeo & Juliet of ancient China. Chen and He deftly combine a Western classical idiom with elements from Chinese opera, such as grace notes and portamento effects, and the work has become one of the most famous and acclaimed pieces of Chinese classical music. This album also features an interpretation of Chen Gang’s Sunshine over Tashkurgan, which adds Central-Asian maqam to the stylistic palette.

Rising star violinist Chloe Chua presents a recording combining Chen Gang and He Zhanhao’s Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto with Niccolò Paganini’s First Violin Concerto, performed together with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Rodolfo Barráez and Mario Venzago. The Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto was written in 1959, and inspired by a tale often called the Romeo & Juliet of ancient China. Chen and He deftly combine a Western classical idiom with elements from Chinese opera, such as grace notes and portamento effects, and the work has become one of the most famous and acclaimed pieces of Chinese classical music. This album also features an interpretation of Chen Gang’s Sunshine over Tashkurgan, which adds Central-Asian maqam to the stylistic palette.

"The greatest songs never grow old, they just get better as a select wine." In this collection are collected 3 generations of romantic music of the 50's, 60's and 70's.

The most famous Chinese concertos: the Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto was written in 1958 by He Zhanhao and Chen Gang while they were students at the Shanghai Conservatory and was first performed in May the following year, the Yellow River Piano Concerto, was based on the famous Yellow River Cantata by Xin Singhai, a work dating from the period of the Sino-Japanese War.

Lolli has received relatively little attention in modern times. I haven’t, for example, been able to trace a single reference to him in the pages of MusicWeb International. Despite this he holds a rather prominent place in that line of Italian violin virtuosi which runs from a figure such as Biagio Marini through Corelli and Tartini to Paganini and Viotti. The musicologist Albert Mell has, not unreasonably, written of him that he “was from many points of view the most important violin virtuoso before Paganini” (Musical Quarterly, Vol. 44, 1958) and Simon McVeigh (in The Cambridge Companion to the Violin) has described him as “the archetypal travelling virtuoso”.

Boccherini's stature as a great composer stands chiefly on his works for cello - these concertos, the cello sonatas, and above all the quintets for two violins, viola, and two cellos. The two performances by Tim Hugh and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, produced by Naxos, may not set the bar for interpretive brilliance, but Mr. Hugh plays beautifully, with excellent tone in his highest passages, and the price is right. If you haven't given Boccherini a listener's chance, these two CDs, sold separately, might open your ears.