Sheng in Luxembourg

Luxembourg Sinfonietta International Composition Prize Concert, 2008

New Works for Solo-Sheng and Orchestra
Huang Ruo MO; Lan-chee Lam Threnody for the Earth; Kee Yong Chong Phoenix calling; Xiaozhong Yang Horsetail Whisk II; Lok-yin Tang It is What it is !; Stephen Yip Six Paths

Luxembourg Sinfonietta/Marcel Wengler
Wu Wei - sheng [pictured]

LCNM 408

This live recording is of one concert that I greatly regret to have been unable to attend in Luxembourg, where we once enjoyed the hospitality of Marcel Wengler for a memorable ISCM week
(2000).

Since then we have received CDs of prize concerts from that source regularly, q.v. http://www.musicalpointers.co.uk/reviews/cddvd/lux2004.htm.

Last year's was perhaps the most innovative of them all, and celebrates the Chinese sheng - probably the best known of all the Asian free reed instruments - in a Western contemporary context. The versatile Luxembourg Sinfonietta commissioned the chosen works to be played by Wu Wei (pictured) and all were given at this concert, headed by Americ-based Chinese composer Huang Ruo who deservedly won the adjudicators' prize and, too, the audience prize. ully justifies the project, as indeed do all the others. I was particularly taken by Lok-yin Tang's witty It is what it is !, which would be a hit anywhere.

Exposure to the Chinese contemporary music scene is patchy; HuddersfieldFestival1999 was memorable for its in-depth presentation of China's new music, but exposure in London has been sporadic, to say the least.

This CD, No 408 of an impressive series, is highy recommendable and the others of recent years are well worth exploring too; are they marketed outside their small country of origin?

Peter Grahame Woolf

Video; see and hear Wu Wei playing Guo Wenjing's Sound from Tibet for sheng and 6 wind instruments (2001) in Amsterdam [Editor]