Chen Yi - Momentum

CHEN Yi  (b.1953)

Momentum

Momentum, for orchestra

Chinese Folk Dance Suite, for violin & orchestra: 

I. Lion Dance. Energetically

II. YangKo. Elastically

 III. Muqam. Fierily

Dunhuang Fantasy, for organ & wind ensemble

Romance and Dance, for 2 violins & string orchestra:

 I. Romance of Hsiao and Ch'in

II. Dance

Tu, for orchestra

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Lan Shui

Chen Yi (b. 1953) is not as well-known as Tan Dun, but in my opinion she is a far better composer. Granted, her music is not for everyone; those who don't like dissonant contemporary music won't like it. Chen Yi's aesthetic is based on something of a yin/yang idea, bringing Western dissonances and contemporary rhythmic techniques to play with traditional pentatonic melodies and rhythms from her home country. She omits, at least on this CD, the Western pop and Hollywood cliches that Tan Dun includes, and so her music seems to me more athletically lean, more pure, and more ferocious. Both the Dunhuang Fantasy for organ and chamber winds and the Chinese Folk Dance Suite begin uncompromisingly, with aggressive dissonances and sharply disjunct lines, only later revealing the Chinese melodies on which they are nominally based. The final movement of the Folk Dance Suite is far more melodic from the first notes, and uses modes of middle Eastern origin in a very appealing fashion--perhaps this will be the most accessible track on the CD. Tu, the final piece on the CD and the most recent of these works, is a memorial to the New York firefighters who lost their lives in the destruction of the World Trade Center. The program notes describe it as ending with 'emphatic gestures, resolute and hopeful of the composer's faith in freedom." I must admit that I have trouble hearing it that way; the extended note in the low strings seems to me less hopeful and more full of promise for future calamity. Nevertheless, it's a very moving and emotional piece; superbly crafted and conceived.