Have you ever seen a Chinese orchestra performance? If so, you may have seen a cello in the orchestra. Traditional Chinese music does not have the Western concept of harmony, and instead, it involves a wide variety of music styles and instruments, each with a distinctive quality. As time has changed, modern Chinese orchestras have taken into account how the various timbres blend in together in their ensemble arrangements; Many composers have also attempted to incorporate Western music, with many of them using the cello or double bass to add a bass part.
It has been common to see the fusion of Eastern and Western music, and the cello can even play a solo role in a Chinese orchestra nowadays. One of the most representative works must be the Cello Concerto Endless Way (《路漫漫》) written by the former Music Director of the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, Kuan Nai-chung.
Kuan Nai-chung graduated from the Central Conservatory of Music with a degree in music composition. He is renowned for his masterful blend of Chinese and Western music. The concerto Endless Way was written for Jay Humeston, the principal cellist of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra at the time. Despite his nationality in the United States, Humeston has a deep connection with Hong Kong and is a great interpreter of Eastern music.
The theme of Endless Way is based on Qu Yuan's famous poem Li Sao (離騷 The Sorrow of Parting), in which he says, "the road is boundless - cultivation so distant, I shall explore it from beginning to end."[1], and it is about the spirit of the literati and heroes who had dedicated themselves to the country throughout the history of China. Their patriotic spirit is the inspiration for this concerto. The piece follows the structure of Western music, but uses a wide range of Chinese instruments such as pipa and erhu; the melodic ebb and flow of the piece have embodied thoughts of the composer's Chinese philosophy, making the piece even more unique.
However, it is interesting to note that Kuan did not explain the reasoning behind the score to Humeston or anyone else who later performed The Road Runs On. He explained in an interview that music does not need a fixed explanation, "There are different ways of presenting music, and there are a hundred Shakespeares in a hundred theatres. So, with care and attention to detail, Humeston completed his version of Endless Way in the Taipei and Kaohsiung performances, as well as the later recorded the CD version of the piece as follows:
https://y.qq.com/n/ryqq/albumDetail/002WPHn11dwlEL
https://moov.hk/#/album/VAHG00112520A (only available to Moov members)
Later, Zhu Yibing performed it for the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, and it was a very different version for Guan Nai-chung.
Zhu Yibing comes from a musical family and was one of the six members of the Cologne Philharmonic Cello. He has also served as guest or principal cello in some of the world's leading symphony orchestras such as Basel and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. According to Kuan, Zhu Yibing's playing is more free-spirited, yet "particularly spiritual and moving": sometimes gentle, sometimes violent, it seems to unconsciously bring out the mournfulness and sorrow of patriotic literati.
Zhu Yibing's version was the first performance of Endless Way in Hong Kong, but the version performed by the Chinese Orchestra has not been made available on the Internet. While searching the internet, I did find that the Chinese Music Orchestra of National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan gave the first movement The Road as its graduation concert piece two years ago.
The performance was in 2020 for the graduation recital of the 109th year of the National Cheng Kung University: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czQRSO2wjc4
After the COVID become more and more subsided, live performances are starting to return around the world and even in Hong Kong. Let’s look forward to more different versions of Endless Way in the future!