IMUC September Concert

The performers will offer four premieres in Chile that demonstrate the fusion of techniques and resources of traditional Asian music and Western music of the written tradition.

At the opening, a version of Serenade (2024) by the Indonesian composer Eunike Tanzil (1998) will be heard: a particularly virtuoso concert piece that has become well known since it was premiered by Ray Chen and the Royal Philharmonic, and also recorded on a 2024 album for Decca.

A selection from the Sonata Hero (2010) by the famous Chinese composer Tan Dun will be added, a version for violin and piano of the soundtrack he wrote for the film of the same name by Zhang Yimou, a martial arts film that portrays a legend from the Qin Dynasty, in the 3rd century BC.

The program will include Gasa (1963) by Isang Yung, who takes up the Korean song tradition called Gasa, reworking it with violin instead of voice and piano in the place of the bamboo flute and incorporating twelve-tone resources.

The closing will be with another musical reconstruction of a love legend, this time from the Tang Dynasty (7th to 10th centuries): Butterfly Lover’s Concerto (1959). The work was written by He Zhanhao and Chen Gang when they were studying composition at the Shanghai Conservatory, and fuses elements of the Yue Opera, the pentatotic scale and resources from contemporary music that allow them to imitate the sounds of Chinese instruments such as the ehru and the pipa.