“Shi Fuhong’s karma has brought her to
study with Gary Kulesha in Toronto and to the commissioning of “Lightenings”
that received its world premiere last night. Based on a poem by
Seamus Heaney and structured on the 30th hexagram of the I
Ching-“Radiance”, this composition depicts the world’s striving for
light and love. It is richly orchestrated for the NMC winds and
strings, piano, organ and 4 percussionists ensconced in a
pandemonium of drums, bells, chimes, gongs and sonic marvels.
One hears at the beginning Robert Aitken conducting a silence from
which emerge some haunted house effects. These rise to a pandemonium
that’s soothed by harp and chimes of heaven into a swelling choir of
voices that merge into clatter of castanets sounding like gravel
cast up onto a naked strand. The four movements include sonorities I
would describe as a fever of drums, a touch of ragtime horn, a heart
attack machine, a flow of flute and strings thickly textured with
gongs and Peter Pavlovsky’s deeply bowed bass, all fading to
transparency, evanescence, and space.”
-Stanley Fefferman (showtimemagazine.ca) (Friday, February
16, 2007)
Press
here
to read the review. (External link, in Chinese) -'Dialogue' by
Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing on 26 December, 2005
Press
here
to read the review. (External link, in Chinese) -'Free and
Unfettered Sauner' by Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra on 6 & 7 June,
2003
