Kansas City Symphony: Chen Yi "Si Ji"

After waiting a year, the Kansas City Symphony under the direction of Music Director Michael Stern, performed the local premiere of Chen Yi's "Si Ji" (Seasons). Orginally programmed for the start of last season, it was postponed when Stern was unable to make the first concert due to the birth of his daughter. Since Chen Yi's husband Zhou Long provided the opening work for Stern's first season, it was only proper that Chen Yi do the same. Since then, "Si Ji" has been recognized as one of Chen Yi's best works and was on the short list for the Pulitzer Prize in Music this past year.

Born in China and educated there and in the US, Chen Yi's music is a hybrid of traditional Chinese music and Western instrumentation and form. Her works are often inspired by Chinese cultural traditions, in which music is an integral art form, along with poetry, calligraphy, and painting. Thus the inspiration of Si Ji from four Chinese poems describing breathtakingly beautiful scenes from nature's cycle.

My exposure to Chen Yi has been through a couple of recordings, (even though she and her husband are residents of Kansas City, both professors at UMKC), the disc of her works with the Women's Philharmonic and her Percussion Concerto with Evelyn Glennie as solo. I have found the music on those discs a tough nut to crack, somewhat dryly academic and harsh. I found myself preferring the more gentle and introspective music of Zhou Long.

But Si Ji is a different animal. From its vibrant, expectant beginning with shimmering, chattering mallet percussion through moments of transcendent beauty and violent, shattering climaxes, "Si Ji" paints a vivid portrait of the Chinese landscape as it reflects nature and its inevitable, changing journey.

The ending of the work is simply incredible, a grand climax from the huge forces describing the thunderstorm...

As clouds rack waves urge waves,
With severe wind a long roll of thunder.
In house curtains on four walls,
In bed looking into thousand mountains under a gust of rain.


...swept away by a figure in the harp as the sound dissipates. Breathtaking.

The rest of this interestingly programmed concert was equally fine. A well conceived Beethoven "Creatures of Prometheus" Overture with fine winds opened the program. Young violin sensation Stephanie Jeong demonstrated incredible technique and tone in Paganini's grating Violin Concerto # 1. I long to hear this sensational, yet sensitive lady in a more gratifying work, say Tchaikovsky, Bruch, Sibelius or even Berg.

The final work, Rachmaninoff's strangely satisfying Symphony # 3, received a frequently suave and yet propulsive performance to bring the evening to a wonderful close.

Two major complaints here, neither related to the performances: 1) the ushers seated a whole row of latecomers in front of me about 3/4 of the way through the Beethoven. For god's sake, waiting a couple of minutes would not have hurt a thing. 2) The new program notes are totally inadequate. The KCS has fine notes online for each performance but the printed ones are lacking. There was not a line of description for "Si Ji" only biographical information on Chen Yi. Thankfully the audience was intelligent enough to "get the picture" in "Si Ji" but the poems are so integral to the music that having them available would have made a fine experience even more meaningful.