武侠三部曲

Of the Chinese composers who received training in the years after the end of the Cultural Revolution, Tan Dun has the most immediately accessible style, and his success has been global in scope. This does not mean his style is simple, and in fact his music is notable for the detail with which it is tailored to specific occasions. The music on this release is adapted from his scores, popular in themselves, for three well-known martial arts films, and you might think of him as a musical counterpart to the director of one of the three films, Zhang Yimou. Both are masters of an epic sweep that initially seems heavily Westernized: Zhang's imagery seems drawn from Hollywood, and Tan's tonality European. But each is much more Chinese than he appears. In Tan's case this is not simply a question of the Chinese traditional instruments that are combined with the Western orchestra, or of the Chinese scales employed. It also involves the ways of playing the instruments, here executed entirely by Chinese musicians except for violinist Itzhak Perlman, the Western player who has shown the most enduring interest in Asian genres. He appears in four cuts from the score to Hero, arranged for violin, traditional Chinese instruments, and orchestra, and each of the other two sets of film selections is also arranged for a prominent soloist, cellist Yo-Yo Ma in the case of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and pianist Lang Lang in the music from the lesser-known The Banquet. These suites, with the possible exception of the Hero pieces, extract some of the emotional essence of each film and will appeal to those who simply enjoyed the cinematic spectacles. Anyone with a taste for the big, impeccably produced spectacles that are the specialty of contemporary Chinese culture will enjoy them, too, as will those tracking the spread of a truly global music: you can't find a better example than this. Tan Dun conducted the music in Shanghai (with the Shanghai Philharmonic) and New York (with the China Philharmonic); the mastering cleanly puts these sources together.