The conceptual and multifaceted composer/conductor Tan Dun has made an indelible mark on the world’s music scene with a creative repertoire that spans the boundaries of classical music, multimedia performance, and Eastern and Western traditions. He is a recipient of today’s most prestigious honours including the GRAMMY® Award, Academy Award, Grawemeyer Award for classical composition, Musical America’s Composer of The Year, Shostakovich Award and the Bach Prize of Hamburg, and his music has been played throughout the world by leading orchestras, opera houses, international festivals, and on radio and television. As a conductor, Tan Dun has led the world’s most renowned orchestras, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Berliner Philharmoniker, Philadelphia Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Filarmonica della Scala and the Münchner Philharmoniker, among others. In 2010, he served as Cultural Ambassador to the World for World EXPO 2010 Shanghai. Tan Dun’s individual voice has been heard widely by diverse audiences. His Internet Symphony, which was commissioned by Google/YouTube, has reached over fifteen million people online. Paper Concerto was premièred with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the opening of the Walt Disney Hall. His multimedia concerto, The Map, first performed by Yo Yo Ma and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, has been included in the Carnegie Hall Composers Gallery. Important recent premières include Four Secret Roads of Marco Polo for the Berlin Philharmonic and Piano Concerto ‘The Fire’ for Lang Lang and the New York Philharmonic.

The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra is one of Asia’s leading orchestras. Enriching Hong Kong’s cultural life for over a century, the Orchestra has grown into a world–class ensemble of 90 players drawn from both China and overseas, performing under the artistic leadership of renowned conductors. Jaap van Zweden is its current Music Director, having succeeded Edo de Waart who held the position from 2004 to 2012.

www.hkpo.com

Listen to the conclusion of Concerto for Orchestra:

The Symphonic Poem on Three Notes describes an evolutionary arc from nature through industry and back to nature, the traditional orchestra augmented with a range of unorthodox sound sources such as wind, stones and car brake drums. The drama of Orchestral Theatre centres on memories of ritual from the composer’s childhood, linking folk music styles to Western atonality, while the Concerto for Orchestra describes the exoticism of Marco Polo’s geographical, musical and spiritual journeys.

"When I was a child, growing up in the countryside of China’s Hunan province, the villagers, local band members and the village Shaman would always sing and play together. They combined their voices with the sounds of nature, such as water, stones and leaves. Their music was a blending of colours linking together ritual operatic performance and people chanting. The three pieces recorded here are all related to those distant musical memories of mine. In those memories, the sounds were never divided between the instruments and the sounds of nature – in my ear they were one. The pieces that you listen to here are firmly rooted in a traditional orchestral sound, but contain an interplay between experimental and ritualistic vocalizations and integrate the natural sounds of stones, air and leaves. This is where my experimental ideas meet the mystery of the rituals and village opera of my childhood, and where the industrial sounds of today meet my early countryside memories... I want to have avant–garde sonorities and outrageous music imageries meet my mystic philosophy and melt into the rice fields of my memory." – Tan Dun