Chinese

It is not clear what took Sony Classical five years to issue these performances, recorded by violinist Joshua Bell and the Singapore Chinese Orchestra in 2018. Having had it in the can, it would have made ideal pandemic-era listening. However, better is certainly late than never, and the recording is a real find. It made classical best-seller lists in the summer of 2023. Most musical fusions have one tradition or the other at the core, but in this one, the trips between Western and Chinese are so numerous that one loses track.

Award-winning violinist Joshua Bell’s forthcoming recording Butterfly Lovers features one of the most renowned works in the Chinese classical violin repertoire, the Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto. Recorded with the Singapore Chinese Orchestra (SCO) and conducted by Tsung Yeh, the work is a distinctive adaptation for an ensemble of traditional Chinese instruments.

VA - The Hugo Masters: An Anthology of Chinese Classical Music (4CD, 1992)
MP3 320 kbps | 4 CD | Covers included | Label: Celestial Harmonies | 231 min | 602 mb
Genre: World, Ethnic, Classical Chinese

The liner notes of The Hugo Masters: An Anthology of Chinese Classical Music contain extensive documentation of the various instruments used in Chinese solo and orchestral music, with descriptions of their history and modifications, as well as an essay to help Western listeners understand the background of Chinese classical music.

Appearing with leading orchestras and conductors around the world, Evelyn Glennie has also collaborated with musicians as diverse as Emmanuel Ax, the King’s Singers and Bjork. On the present disc, she appears with the Taipei Chinese Orchestra to perform original compositions and arrangements for percussion and Chinese orchestra.

During the Han Dynasty the theory of the Five Elements became inseparably intertwined with the Yin Yang theory of Changes, also known as the Yi Ching (I-Ching). According to the “Book of Changes: Cycle of Elemental Music”, Earth, Metal, Wood, Fire and Water correspond with spleen, lung, liver, heart and kidney respectively.