Author Archives: ZiyuRitaHe

Being a fan of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra for many years, I just needed to watch one of their performances during the final exam period as my way to relax and destress. Out of the options such as the legendary Mozart and Beethoven, I chose one with the concept that I was not as familiar with – the Russian composers who dealt with political minefields of Russia and the Soviet Union in different ways: Stravinsky, Prokofiev & Shostakovich.

During class, I had heard a brief introduction about Stravinsky and his ballet “The Rite of Spring”; but I had no prior knowledge for Prokofiev and Shostakovich. Therefore, I went in with an open mind, hoping to get a sense of Russian classical music at the end of the concert.

The concert started with a short introduction given by the Music Director of VSO, Otto Tausk, on a brief explanation of the pieces. The first piece is the Funeral Song by Stravinsky. Stravinsky left Russia before the Russian Revolution, and in fact, he could not return until very late of his life. The ‘Funeral Song’ was recently discovered, since it was lost during the Russian Revolution. The song started with a depressed mood – with the strings on very low notes, following by wind instruments intensifying the suspense. The strings had two sections in the song – one with longer notes playing very sorrowful and heartbreaking melodies; the other section were playing fast sextuplets, for which I felt that there was something underlying that wanted to rush and breakthrough. The minor key made this song very dark and gloomy, and the song reminded me of one of the dark Harry Potter soundtracks.

The second piece of work was Violin Concerto No.2 in G minor by Prokofiev, featuring Rosanne Philippens on solo violin. In comparison with the Stravinsky piece and especially with the next Shostakovich piece, the orchestra size for this one is relevantly smaller – there was a maximum of two identical instruments playing for each kind of wind and brass instrument. There were three movements in total, with the first and the third being Allegro and the second being Andante. The most impressive part was the solo violin. Rosanne was playing with enthusiasm and fierce, playing beautifully on the long solo where there were many notes with rapid jumps.

The final piece was a majestic one: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk: Suite Arr. James Conlon by Shostakovich. This opera was banned in the Soviet Union for censorship for many years. To end the concert, this piece involved with a full orchestra – with five percussionists. The original work was the opera written by Shostakovich, based on the story of Lady Macbeth: a woman who falls in love with one of her husband’s workers and commits a murder. Thus, it sounded very serious and dramatic, and just like opera seria, an unresolved conflict was being painted quite clearly. When Mr. Otto Tausk extended his arms fully to cue for the full orchestra to play the climax on forte, I had goosebumps all over me. There were so much solemnity and majesty in this piece of work.

After all, the concert was fantastic – it was very worth receiving a standing ovation from the audience. After listening to this concert, I just can’t wait to go to the next one.

On January 26th, VSO has hosted a big birthday party in Vancouver to celebrate its 100 years of musical journey. As a passionate choral singer myself, I watched two choral groups’ performances – one being Elektra Women’s Choir, for which I have written a journal on already; and another one being Vancouver Youth Choir, the relevantly new youth choir under the director & founder, Carrie Tennant.

Carrie Tennant was a good friend of my high school choral director’s. Many of my choral friends from high school are currently singing in Vancouver Youth Choir, so t was also a great moment for me to see my old friends who are still singing to perform at this very special occasion. I didn’t get to sit in the front for Elektra Women’s Choir, which I sadly regret about; but for Vancouver Youth Choir’s performance, I entered the venue quite early and got a seat in the third row.

The slot for Vancouver Youth Choir was also 30 minutes. Carrie started the performance with a short introduction to share her happiness of the 100th year celebration of VSO, and went into performance right after. The Vancouver Youth Choir sang six songs in total, mostly contemporary pieces. (There were no program that lists all song titles, but here is what I remember)

1. 19th Century piece by Vaughan Williams, polyphonic
2. An upbeat, tribal sounding song; involves with stomping
3. A song from Georgia (the country, not the state) which featured the sopranos and the altos – used a lot of imagery of nature and symbolism of politics
4. A Schoolyard chant which was sung in three different keys, involves clapping and a djembe. It was a very lively and cheerful song with high energy and alternating dynamics between each part. It captured the attention of the audiences very well, and it made me tap my feet along with the rhythms.
5. An Atlantic folk song
6. “North” by Sleeping At Last, performed with a piano; arranged by George Chung just for VYC – a contemporary arrangement to create a sense of home and belongingness. The song ended with an also solo singer, singing the melody beautifully with other voices accompanying (homophonically).

As we could see from this setlist, the Vancouver Youth Choir would not satisfy with just one or a few types of music style. Every song was different in terms of composition era, energy level, accompanying instrument, theme, genre, dynamics, the colour of the voices, etc. Each song creates a contrast with the previous song, which kept on surprising me further throughout their setlist.

Now in April, I am sitting down and revisiting my concert journals, recalling how amazed I was by their diverse range of music styles. I could not help on reflecting on the entire music evolution that has been covered in the course Musc 326A, making comparisons between medieval music and music from the 19th century, thinking of how music has gotten so sophisticated and complex. It does not stop here – as we are still hearing so many amazing music creations in the present.

On January 26th, VSO has hosted a big birthday party in Vancouver to celebrate its 100 years of musical journey. Downtown was flooded with music lovers – the huge lines outside of venues, the people rushing to see the next performances, the happy smiles and the body grooves of the audiences, the enthusiastic performers on the stages, etc. etc.. I was so grateful for being a Vancouverite with access to such a wonderful music community.

Being a choral singer ever since high school, I wanted to take this opportunity to see some choir performances. I quickly made up my mind to check out Elektra Women’s Choir, not only for its reputation in the choral community; but most importantly, for it being co-founded by Diane Loomer.

When I was still a high school student singing in Point Grey Chamber Choir, I once had the privilege of attending one of Diane Loomer’s choral workshops. Not only her choral knowledge was so extensive, but her techniques applied to our singing were so effective that we had immediate improvements during the workshop. Unfortunately, my choral director has passed us the disheartening news of her decease, just a year after we had our workshop. Having heard that Diane co-founded Elektra Women’s Choir, I knew that I must attend.

Elektra Women’s Choir only had time to sing four songs since the time slot for them was only 30 minutes long. I entered the Orpheum Theatre Stage 3 minutes before the performance started, therefore I was sitting towards the back. Orpheum is a big venue designed for orchestras and symphonies, and it could hold many audiences. Since the stage needed to accommodate many different groups on the same day, there was very minimal stage equipment available, such as speakers and mics. For this reason, it was a tad difficult to hear the choir, especially when the space was also creating a lot of echoes and the choir was singing in a slow tempo, mostly in ‘oo’ vowel, and with not a lot of rapid dynamic changes. Another factor was that for women’s choirs, the sound might be even harder to be heard within such a big space without the support of the basses.

The pieces being performed were very much like the hymns from the Renaissance Era – sacred, with homophonic texture (soprano line singing the melody with the other parts accompanying), and polyphonic in the homorhythmic part, or the chorale part. Even though the text was not as strophic as the hymns, the melody was still being repeated once or twice with new or old words (I couldn’t hear exactly due to the echoes).

The Elektra Women’s Choir had very beautiful voices. The vowels were round with resonance, and the singers blended with each other very well. During the polyphonic parts, all the singers were very in sync, and no voices stood out (the optimal polyphony!). Overall, I enjoyed their performance very much, and I would love to attend their concert, where I could hear them in a venue designed for singing so I could enjoy their beautiful voices more.

As I was exploring concert opportunities on campus, the one called UBC Composers’ Concerts came upon my attention. Being a non-music-major student, I had very little knowledge of what music students could create aside from learning music theory, history and technology, and practicing existing music works. Therefore, I went to the UBC Composers’ concert with no expectation of what I was going to see.

The concert was not only about one specific genre or instrument. It started with a small brass ensemble, then moved on to a guitar quartet, then female voice duets, violin duets, solo singing with piano accompaniment, and ended with John Stetch – a jazz pianist before he returned to school for his masters in composition – on piano with percussion accompaniment. I must say that the concert went absolutely beyond my imagination. It was mind-blowing for me to hear how those instruments that I thought I was familiar with could be played in a way that sounded completely new to me.

Even though the instruments used were different for each set of performances, I think all the compositions had one similar theme, which was about mystery, gloominess, madness, and absurdity. Almost all compositions were through-composed, and I could rarely find harmonic chords – most of the chords were inharmonic and somehow unpleasant to the ears, which created a sense of absurdity and gloominess. However, I could see that the composers were trying to be very novel rather than being conservative on their arrangements; for example, all four guitar players were playing not only at different rhythms, but also at different meters, which made my ears very busy trying to follow what each of them was doing.

One example of how an instrument sounded different from its traditional sound was the way a student played his guitar during the guitar quartet. He played his guitar with a lot of vibrato on his fingers, creating a sound very similar to how guzheng, a traditional Chinese instrument, would sound. This did not make him stand out from the other three guitarists but rather blended in well while creating surprises for the audiences.

The last song played by John Stetch was the most impressive one to me. It was an evolution of madness, a cluster of piano-percussion experiments, and an eager expression of feelings. Again, it was through-composed, and I doubt that it involved with a bit of improvisation as well, based on the complexity of each chord and how the percussionist hit different percussion instruments/items so randomly. As the intensity and the speed continued to grow and reached to a mad level towards the ending of the piece, Stetch even stood up and started to use his elbows to hit the piano keys, while the percussionist was literally trying to hit everything he could see. It reminded me of how Beethoven would also be ‘mad’ when he composed his symphonies, but I just could not imagine if Beethoven decided to elbow the piano in his piece and it somehow ended up being recorded on scores.

Having heard a completely new style of composition, I could not resist recalling what I learned in class about how the popularity of opera seria / French Operas had been taken over by the ‘intermezzis’ opera buffa / Italian Comic Operas and people (although mostly high-class people) were unhappy about this new form of opera at first. To be honest, I might not be able to appreciate through-composed pieces with the presence of so many inharmonic chords as much as I appreciate Bach’s structured fugues with intensive use of imitative polyphony. However, I know that without creativity, innovation, and courage to be different from what’s out there now, the history of music could never have been as majestic as it is now. It’s hard to say what kind of music is right and what is wrong, but music never gets enough of innovation.

On January 28th, I went to Ólafur Arnalds’s concert at The Commodore Ballroom. I was very excited to see him perform live, since I had been a fan of his music for many years. Ólafur Arnalds is an Icelandic artist known for his ambient music produced with strings, piano and the use of computer programming.

The setting of the stage has surprised me as soon as I walked into the venue – there were four pianos on the stage! I became quite excited to see how he would intertwine those pianos with other string instruments to deliver the optimal auditory experience to the audiences. The ensemble consisted of Ólafur Arnalds on piano, one cello player, one viola player, and two violinists. Arnalds would simultaneously operate the computer program to add loops and beats on top of the sounds created by the instruments.

From an audience’s perspective, his music had a lot of imagery, just like the movie soundtracks. For example, as they performed the song ‘they sink’, I could close my eyes and picture myself being underwater. The scattered, staccato, light notes on the piano were symbolizing the sun glistening on the surface of the water with a few ripples; while I could still feel the depth of the ocean as the cello would layout long bass notes as the foundation. This reminds me of how Pachelbel layers Canon in D with the arpeggiated chords on cello, violas, and other harmonizing string instruments to harmonize for the melody played on the violin. However, there is no basso continuo like there is in Canon, since the audience could not tell what the main melody is – it just sounded like a cluster of harmonies that were not accompanying any line. Therefore, it could not be summarized as purely polyphonic or homophonic, but rather a combination of them. Since each instrument was doing a different thing rhythmically, the song was homorhythmic. The lower notes of the song did not follow a chord progression sequence as Canon did either; but was rather through-composed with little or no repetition.

One of the highlights of the show was that Arnalds had applied modern technology to his performance. The audiences could see him physically playing on one piano, and occasionally input some commands on his computer program. Meanwhile, the other two pianos on each end were playing on their owns, supporting the melody Arnalds played on his piano along with other string instruments.

The combination of three pianos playing together had definitely made the sound richer and more interesting. Nonetheless, Arnalds’ music was consistent on one theme: peace and serenity. Even though I still had emotions listening to the concert, especially when the strings adding intensity by going up the scale and finally resolve the 7th notes, it was still not comparable to the music in Baroque and Renaissance eras, where intense emotions and feelings were conveyed through powerful operas.

In the end, there is no good or bad about different forms of music. I believe that as technology further enhances through time, there will only be more innovation on the presentation of music.