| Northwest Wind |
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| Culture | |
| Saturday, 04 December 2010 | |
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As the first Chinese to win the prestigious BASCA British Composer Award, Raymond Yiu is extremely humble. “I never expected to receive it”, Yiu said as I met him on a snowy December day in central London, “but I’m very happy.”
Yiu was born in Hong Kong, and studied piano since the age of four. He began writing music after coming to Britain as a teenager, and took up composing again while studying at university. As a composer, Yiu is mostly self-taught, but his works are highly recognised and respected.
Northwest Wind, Yiu’s winning piece for the BASCA British Composer Awards, is one such example. The nine minute short chamber piece is written and premiered in March 2010 by Lontano at the South London Gallery and conducted by Odaline de la Martinez. The piece drew inspiration from a popular genre in the 80s in Northwest China, hence Yiu gave it the genre’s name: Northwest Winds.
“I started composing last year, which was the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square event. The event deeply influenced me as a child because the students who marched to the streets in protest were not much older than I was. I don’t want to politicise my music, but I hope that music can express my memory of the incident.” Yiu explained that although the music makes no explicit reference to the incident, the marching beats in the middle of the piece recollect its atmosphere. “Different people can interpret it differently. I was surprised to find that when I played this music recently in Paris to someone who participated in the movement as a student, he was moved to tears.”
Played using the instruments flute, clarinet, harp, viola and double bass, the piece has more elegance compared to the original roaring feeling of the Northwest Wind genre. But the honesty and unpretentiousness of the genre is well captured by Yiu’s composition. Originated in the 80s, when China first experienced a dramatic surge of Western music, literature, philosophy and art, the genre combines Chinese cultural music with pop, rock and roll, as well as other contemporary elements in a harmonising way. Key representatives of this genre include Cui Jian, Tian Zhen, Hu Yue, Hang Tianqi, and Na Ying. Although many years have passed since the genre rose to its peak influence, many of these songs remain popular nowadays.
Amongst all of Yiu’s works, it is his composition for the opera The Original Chinese Conjuror, shown at the Aldeburgh Festival and the Almeida Opera Season in 2006 that he is most well known for. Based on the real life story of William Ellsworth Robinson, the opera was an experiment to combine different theatrical protocols into an integrated whole. The opera was well received by audience and critics alike, but in the same year Yiu surprised many by deciding to take a break from composing.
“The opera had a tight schedule, and I felt quite burnt out after that. For two years I wasn’t able to write a single note, and I chose to be silent when I have nothing to say.”
But Yiu’s music career did not end there. In 2008 he was asked by London Symphony Orchestra to write a piece for the internationally famous pianist Lang Lang and the Silk String Quartet. Although previously having little knowledge of the four Chinese instruments used - erhu, pipa, yangqin and guzheng, his research into how they make sounds completely changed his understanding and feelings toward music.
“I suddenly became fascinated by Chinese music instruments and realised that it is not about playing the right pitch, but creating the right tone. There is something internal and spiritual about Chinese music that opened before me a whole new world.” Yiu’s six and half minute chamber piece Maomao Yu was premiered at London Symphony Orchestra St. Luke’s in 2009, where Yiu conducted the performance.
Since then, Yiu became increasingly fascinated by Chinese music. Although jazz music has strongly influenced his earlier composition, including Maomao Yu, he has decided to experiment a new composition without jazz as an element in Northwest Wind. In the compositional process, he drew much inspiration from the works of Chou Wen-chung, especially the way Chou combines Western and Eastern elements together to create a new realm of expression. As an American Chinese composer, Chou is famous for his research works at Columbia, which led him to synthesize theories of calligraphy, qin, single tones and I ching, all of which represent new grounds in compositional thinking.
In retrospect, Yiu says that his first attempt to put Eastern and Western elements together in his music was back in 2005, in the ensemble piece Night Shanghai. “It was uncomfortable, as if the diverse elements do not belong together. There was friction and conflict.” But in his recent works Maomao Yu and Northwest Wind , he felt that the Eastern and Western elements have achieved a coherence, as if they are layers of glass that overlap, displaying fascinating patterns when viewed together and through each other.
Cecily Liu
Photo credit: Malcolm Crowthers
Raymond Yiu's website: www.raymondyiu.com
Raymond Yiu with pianist Lang Lang |
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