UC San Diego Celebrates Contemporary Music Bridging Eastern and Western Traditions

Tuesday, November 26, the UC San Diego Bridge Music Series presented an east-meets-west concert of contemporary chamber music in the university’s Conrad Prebys Concert Hall. Since the program’s instrumentalists were visiting Principal Players from the Taiwan National Symphony Orchestra, it was appropriate to open the concert with Enchanted Forest Whispers, a work by the contemporary Taiwanese composer Ching-Mei Lin, Associate Professor of Music Theory and Composition at the Taipei National University of the Arts.

Scored for string quartet and harp, Lin’s  Enchanted Forest Whispers contrasts the austerity of edgy, pellucid post-modern textures with accessible allusions to traditional Asian folk melodies. During this elegantly structured 20-minute work, an archipelago of shimmering sounds, I was taken with the enchanting cantillation executed by first violinist Tin-Fang Lee as well as the assertive pizzicato motifs played by harpist Shannon Shuen Chieh. Unlike the feathery arpeggios we typically associate with the harp, Lin effectively uses the harp like a percussion instrument.

I was fortunate to attend the première of Lei Liang’s Song Recollections for string quartet performed by the noted Formosa Quartet in March of 2016, and it was rewarding to encounter this work again. A single movement work, it is also based on Taiwanese folk songs, each one evoking a contrasting mood. “Bunun Prayer”–the Bunun are a Taiwanese indigenous people–opens Song Recollections with a quiet, sustained mediation of tightly voiced chords that suggest the delicate sound of the Chinese sheng, an instrument associated with Confucian temple rites. The second song, “Rukai Love Song” is presented as  a playful duet between the two lower voices, played with ardent finesse by violist  Jubel Chen and cellist Yi-Shen Lien, while the violins fluttered very light, quick repeated notes above them that imitated a spring rain shower.

The work’s most expansive movement, the “Ami Drinking Song,” explodes with assertive, joyous themes often stated in bold octaves and supported by sparkling consonant harmonies to form the vibrant heart of Song Recollections. The fourth song, “Bunun Triumphal Song,” provides a short, noble, procession that leads to “Bunun Prayer,” a return to the work’s hushed beginning. “Yami Lullaby,” the finale, starts out with with the first violin intoning a delicate theme, but soon Liang has all the voices racing to an ebullient conclusion.

Korean-American composer Earl Kim’s 1981 Now and Then, based on texts by Anton Chekhov, W. B. Yeats, and Samuel Beckett, is written for soprano accompanied by flute, harp, and viola. Kirsten Ashley Wiest’s supple, ingratiating soprano illuminated Kim’s sparse but telling themes.

To my knowledge, Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer had no Asian connections, but the style of his 1983 Theseus for harp and string quartet was clearly at home with the approaches of the other three composers on this Bridge Music Series concert. Commissioned and premiered by the Canadian harpist Judy Loman, Theseus is a tour de force for the harpist, and Shannon Shuen Chieh gave a commanding account of the work.

This concert was presented by UC San Diego’s School of Arts and Humanities at the university’s Conrad Prebys Concert Hall on November 26, 2024.