Changchun Impressions

Note

This work was suggested by Zhang Mingyu, who at that time was the head of Changchun’s local television and radio stations. He brought me to work with the Changchun Film Symphony Orchestra on a number of occasions, and as he held a fervent admiration for the UK’s BBC Proms, he wanted to create symphonic concerts that would boost Changchun’s profile both domestically and internationally while also appealing to local residents.

On learning I was also a composer, he suggested I write a programmatic work for symphony orchestra, and sent me an extremely detailed outline for it. I wrote an entirely different piece. Changchun has a large sculpture park in which the orchestra and I performed a number of outdoor concerts. I wanted to write music that would be accessible to the local audience and also reflect in some degree their experience of a visitor to the park during those concerts. So, in this piece, the folksong on which it is based appears in full only at the very end of the work. The listener approaches the folksong from a long way off, by means of various winding paths, as would an audience member walking through the sculpture park.

The music also reflects a little of Changchun’s history as “China’s Hollywood” and gives a flavor of the broad tree-lined avenues that are a legacy of urban development carried out during the Japanese occupation.