Saturday night held far more than just good weather after all the gloomy rain in the morning. In fact, the Palace Theatre held the first half of its Butterfly Lovers’ Gala, which featured the Albany Symphony Orchestra. Now, I’ve never really been to a classical concert before, but the theatre is no stranger to me. So my first thought was that it’s just like a musical without the acting and singing, right? Wrong.
In fact, coming into the theatre half an hour early, the early comers were greeted with a variety of instruments practicing different parts of the concert pieces. Because of the lack of other types of visuals (such as acting or dance), the audience listens to the music and feels the story being told within the pieces. Usually, these pieces have a tale or legend behind them. Beginning the concert was the “Tannhauser Overture” by Richard Wagner, which actually tells the tale of a singing knight who is torn between free love and his moral duties. The overture itself is the music portraying a woman’s sacrifice in exchange for the knight’s redemption. After the rather moving composition, it was time for the main treat and move from European classical music to Chinese-influenced pieces.
Gang Chen and Zhan-Hao He’s composition of the “Butterfly Lovers Concerto” is the tale of a young Chinese girl named Chu Ying-Tai who dresses herself up as a boy in order to attend school at a nearby village. In the school, she meets Leung Shan-Po, a schoolfriend who she gradually falls in love with. However, Ying-Tai finds out that she must marry someone her parents have chosen for her.
After Ying-Tai returns to her own village, Shan-Po seeks her out and he finds out that his schoolfriend was actually female. This brings about his realization that he was also in love with Ying-Tai. Because of Ying-Tai’s arranged marriage, Shan-Po dies of a broken heart. As Ying-Tai processes down her village on her wedding day, the woman runs to Shan-Po’s tomb and stabs herself with her lover’s sword. The piece is reminiscent of a Chinese “Romeo and Juliet” for a reason: The lovers suffer a tragic end, and are reincarnated as butterflies that will spend their days with each other forever.
The music mixed Western symphonic music with a particular solo instrument—the ehru—that brought out the Chinese context of the concerto. The ehru is a traditional Chinese violin-type instrument played with two strings. Betti Xiang, the virtuoso ehru musician, played the solo as the orchestra around her blended its Western style with her ehru’s traditional sound. By listening to the music, I almost felt as if I was transported to the tiny Chinese village and watching the two students walking the path toward school.
By intermission, it made me wonder what else the orchestra can dish out when I realized that it still had a few more pieces to play before the concert ended. The last piece was the “Symphonie Fantastique” by Hector Berlioz. This particular opus consisted of five movements, four of which were lively and played with energy, while the middle movement focused on the softer side of the piece. In the composition, Berlioz narrates the story of a poet in his experiences of love, jealousy, and death of his beloved. The fifth and last movement was titled “Dream of the Witches’ Sabbath,” a larghetto allegro (“fast and lively”) piece that ended the concert with a standing ovation from the listeners.
Classical music isn’t for everyone; some appreciate it, while others cringe and insist that it’s completely soporific. For those who have yet to experience going to a classical concert, I definitely recommend reading the stories behind the pieces before listening to the music. It actually does help you envision the unfolding tale when the music begins to play.
