From The East

Not the usual gentle offering for a Friday – instead something that I “tripped over” accidentally this week.

Today is the Chinese New Year and, earlier in the week, I watched a really good concert by the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra (yep a bit of a strange connection here – their conductor is Chinese) which was a great mix of ‘western’ and ‘eastern’ music – I use both those terms in a very broad sense.

They opened with a recording from a previous year of the Spring Festival Overture by Li Huanzhi – it is the first movement of a four movement suite (and yes – that is correct – I didn’t know that until very recently😂). When I searched YouTube for a ‘standalone’ performance to share I serendipitously chanced upon this version. Unlike the version I first heard – which had a pretty standard orchestration as far as I could tell – this includes a whole host of chinese instruments – and no, I don’t know what half of them are called😃.

Enjoy

Li Huanzhi : Spring Festival Overture

Comments :

Steve Thomas

George, thank you for finding this piece, it took me back to Vietnam (2010) being there for Chinese New Year (big mistake Huge!) but going to see the water puppet show in Hanoi, great music (pics aren’t mine, but could give you the feel)…