After the death of his eldest daughter, the composer Mahler had to resign as director of the Vienna Court Opera and was subsequently diagnosed with heart disease. Mahler, who had mixed feelings, found solace in the Tang poems included in Hans Bettger's Flute of China, and he chose seven of them to compose "Song of the Earth" for two singers and orchestras; in 2004, conductor Yu Long felt the contemporary resonance of the text of "Song of the Earth" and invited Ye Xiaogang to create a modern work of the same name and genre to echo it. Another Song of the Earth was born, nearly a hundred years after Mahler's death.
Two works that span time and space met in the album "Song of the Earth" recorded by Yu Long and the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. Earlier this year, the album produced by classical music label DG Deutsche Grammophon was released worldwide, with two groups of singers, Michel De Young and Brian Jade, Zhang Liping and Shen Yang singing the vocal part of Mahler and Ye Xiaogang's "Song of the Earth" respectively. On October 14th, with the opportunity of the Beijing International Music Festival, the founding artists of "Song of the Earth" gathered again to share their musical insights and behind-the-scenes stories of album production.
The conversation opens in a comparison of the two pieces of music. The sixth movement of Mahler and Ye Xiaogang's "Song of the Earth" is based on the theme of separation, and they also use two Tang poems, Meng Haoran's "SuYeShi Shan Fang Waiting for Ding Dabu" and Wang Wei's "Farewell", but the music they wrote is full of wonderful differences. For example, although it also ends with Wang Wei's poem "But go to Mo Fu Ask, when the white clouds are endless", the Mahler part sung by soprano singer Michel Dejan, the song is interwoven with the sound of harp and steel celesta, unpredictable, Ye Xiaogang heard the entanglement and struggle and the fear of facing the future; in his own creation, Ye Xiaogang added a piece of laughter like "standing on the top of the mountain overlooking life", and then the Sichuan gong and the horse gong sounded high-pitched, and then the rumbling drum sound, as if a thunderstorm was approaching.
Ye Xiaogang
"This laugh is not something that anyone can laugh at." Ye Xiaogang has heard the version interpreted by foreign singers, because there is no opera foundation, laughter can only be dry "hahaha", Zhang Liping has studied Peking Opera, and the performance effect is completely different. Exploring deeper from the music itself is a collision of Eastern and Western cultural ideas.
Yu Long
"These ancient poems, Mahler treats like oil paintings, Ye Xiaogang is like ink paintings, there is room for white space." Yu Long found it interesting that similar contrasts existed everywhere in the two works. Mahler's "Song of the Earth" adopts a German text, and Meng Haoran's "The sound of the pine moon is cool at night, and the wind spring is full of clear sounds" is depicted in great detail: there is a pine tree at night, there is a moon on the tree, the moonlight sprinkles cool, and then the sound of spring water is heard... "The Germans may just want to explain things very clearly, Chinese used to passing by, leaving a lot of imagination." Yu Long also tasted the "birth" feelings that only Chinese had in Ye Xiaogang's music. He remembered that many years ago, when the master conductor Li Delun was alive, he said that Mahler's "Song of the Earth" should be translated as "the song of the earth" more appropriately, because the compositional depicted everywhere was the composer's "mood of walking into the dust".
The album "Song of the Earth" seems to use a controlling variable approach, which condenses the cultural exchange between the East and the West in a level-headed way, but in the memories of Zhou Ping, the director of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, it is often on the verge of "almost failing to record". At the end of last year, recording took place at the Shanghai Concert Hall, where Michelle De Young and Brian Jade needed to travel from afar. On the way in, Michelle was stranded at Frankfurt Airport, and Brian needed to fly back from Vienna to New York to get a visa, each of which was cancelled once or twice. A few days before the recording began, Zhang Liping, who was plagued by foot injuries and waist injuries, thought that she was not in the right state, and when the pressure was the greatest, she even thought of simply not recording.
With so many difficulties, why not postpone or cancel recording? In Yu Long's view, this is the moment when the album needs to be voiced. In the context of the epidemic hindering international exchanges, "it is even more necessary to be more kind and tolerant of different cultures." "When Chinese have become familiar with the works of music giants such as Mahler and Beethoven, "the Western understanding of the East must enter a higher level." Ye Xiaogang believes that at this level, music may be a common language that is more direct than words.
When the album was recorded, Song of the Earth also used the Dolby Atmos format, which showed the details of the performance and the composer's ideas. The sharing activity was also carried out in a Dolby theater, and with the blessing of advanced sound technology, the colors in the music were more clearly displayed, such as the Sichuan gong and horse gong used by Ye Xiaogang, which sounded around different positions in the theater, and Yu Long heard a taste of "ghostly sensen", which was a feeling that was difficult to capture on the stage of the concert hall. For musicians, technology opens up more possibilities for every aspect, from creation to performance.
But Yu also insists that technology only puts wings on art, and that more works like Ye Xiaogang's "Song of the Earth" are needed to make Chinese stories go global. "Foreigners can't think of Chinese culture, only Chinatown, lion dances and small snacks." Yu Long called on musicians not only to stay on the surface, but also to dive into their hearts and create in-depth works that truly explore the connotation of Chinese culture.