Where’s John Borstlap?

The former regular Slippedisc commentator has a major event tonight.

His second violin concerto, Dreamscape Voyage, is receiving its World Première by the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra with Jing Wang as soloist and Jaap van Zweden conducting.

Programme note:

How does the voice of a solo violin, both fragile and intense, relate to the ‘crowd’ of the symphony orchestra? In this violin concerto, it is the voice of the individual amidst a landscape made of other voices, now in harmony, then in contrast; during the unfolding of the voyage in time, everything changes and yet, everything is related. The voice of the solo violin travels through the narrative like a bird in those Chinese silk landscape paintings, where perspectives are not quite real but yet specific, and far away and nearby mingle in a harmonious whole.

‘Dreamscape Voyage’, a shared commission by the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra and the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, was inspired by traditional Chinese silk painting and the nature poetry of Wei Yingwu and Li Bai (8th century AD), great poets from the Tang Dynasty who combine the clear familiar with the harmoniously-elusive, psychologically comparable to these landscape paintings.

The music of this concerto, in one movement, does not attempt at ‘Chinese style’ but tries to capture something of the fleeting but precise nature of Chinese art and poetry in a Western musical language. The focus is not on virtuosity but on the expressive and lyrical qualities of the violin – this instrument closest to the human voice – in relation to the many colours of the symphony orchestra.