Cover He Zhanhao at a Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra concert in 2016 (Photo: courtesy of Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra)
He Zhanhao at a Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra concert in 2016 (Photo: courtesy of Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra)
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65 years after this world-famous concerto first premiered, the 90-year-old composer is returning to the stage to present his arrangement of the piece
The Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra will celebrate the 65th anniversary the premiere of The Butterfly Lovers’ Violin Concert with a concert this week—on October 27 and 28—at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, and will feature the piece’s original co-composer, He Zhanhao. The 90-year-old Zhejiang-born composer is putting on a version that he rearranged in the 1980s, in which the solo violin part—a representation of the female protagonist’s voice—is replaced by the gaohu, a Chinese bowed string instrument that evolved from the erhu in the 1920s.
Often regarded as the eastern equivalent of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, The Butterfly Lovers is an eastern Jin dynasty (317–420) legend that has mesmerised generations with its story about the futile love between a poor scholar named Liang Shanbo, and the daughter of a wealthy family named Zhu Yingtai, who secretly dresses up as a boy to receive an education, where she meets and falls in love with Liang. Composer He first adapted the tale into a violin concerto that premiered in 1959, which has since been celebrated for its soulful music, vividly presentation of the plot, and the harmonious blend of Chinese folk music with western orchestral instruments.
Above He Zhanhao (Photo: courtesy of Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra)
He Zhanhao (Photo: courtesy of Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra)
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When He wrote the piece decades ago, he was 24 years old and a student at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music—who knew what was supposed to be a school project would one day garner international fandom.
He was a violin major who would occasionally go to the countryside to play music with his classmates. It was during this time He discovered the common people still largely preferred the Chinese opera and folk music that they were used to, and that there is a missing bridge between Chinese audiences and western music: “We performed the western classical repertoire we learnt in class to the farmers, and even though they found the music beautiful, they couldn’t appreciate it as they grew up listening to Chinese opera and folk songs,” He said. “So I had to write music that could be understood and liked by the Chinese folks.”
He belonged to the first generation of youth post the establishment of a new China in the 1950s, when music was influenced both by the existing Chinese opera and folk music, as well as foreign musicians from the former Soviet Union and eastern European countries who came to perform in China. This inspired He and his contemporaries at the conservatory to explore how folk music could incorporate modern and western music, and to form an avant-garde music group that blended Chinese folk music with western musical instruments and elements.
The selection of The Butterfly Lovers was no accident: it's an already familiar tale among the people of eastern and southern China. And He, who used to perform with a Cantonese opera troupe in Zhejiang and is therefore well-versed in that genre of music, drew inspiration from Cantonese opera and folk songs to form the main melodies of Butterfly Lovers.
“Many people over the years have seen me as the co-composer of the piece,” He says, “but I always say it’s the people themselves who are the ‘composers’ of Butterly Lovers, as much of the piece’s melodies came from Chinese folk songs and music”.
He adds that because Chinese music tends to be more descriptive and emotional when compared to classical western music, it lends itself well to storytelling: “With each movement in Butterfly Lovers, you can imagine different scenes as the story progresses or the different voices and personalities of the characters,” he says.
When the piece was first performed by a visiting Czechoslovak string quartet, the group had trouble interpreting the score’s glissandos, a common gliding element in Chinese string instrumental pieces. He was then asked by the conservatory’s director to re-work the piece with the help of cello student, Chen Gang, before the final product was recorded at a local radio station, which was well-received by its listeners.
The following year, He was commissioned to compose a bigger version of Butterfly Lovers as part of the celebrations of the 10th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. He and Gang turned the string quartet into a violin concerto for a full orchestra, and this piece premiered in Shanghai on May 27, 1959 to thunderous applause, as well as requests for an encore.
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Above From left: He Zhanhao; Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra's artistic director and He's student Yang Huichang; and Chinese conductor Xia Feiyun at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music (Photo: courtesy of Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra)
From left: He Zhanhao; Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra's artistic director and He's student Yang Huichang; and Chinese conductor Xia Feiyun at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music (Photo: courtesy of Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra)
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The violin concerto was brought to the international stage when a Chinese conductor, who was a student at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, invited Russian violinist Leonid Kogan to perform the solo part. Subsequently, Klaus Heymann, who would in 1987 establish Naxos Records, collaborated with Japanese violinist Takako Nishizaki, Chinese Australian conductor Lim Kek-tjiang and the Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra to perform and record Butterfly Lovers. Since then, many established musicians and orchestras around the world, including Grammy award-winning American violinist Joshua Bell, have also performed Butterfly Lovers, and the violin concerto has fundamentally changed the perception of Chinese music in the western classical music world.
Over the years, He and other composers have experimented with replacing the violin with Chinese instruments; including the erhu (a string instrument), pipa (the Chinese lute), and guzheng (the Chinese plucked zither). For his upcoming concert with the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, He will feature the gaohu, which will be played by the orchestra’s concertmaster Zhang Chongxue. He says the gaohu has a more elegant and soft high-pitched sound compared to the violin, but he “won’t say which is better or worse. It’s more about experimenting with different creative possibilities.”
While the spirit of experimentation knows no boundaries, He does have pearls of wisdom for any composer or musician who may want to play around with mixing Chinese and western music: seek exposure to Chinese poetry, artforms and culture to better understand the essence of Chinese music. “You need a certain technique to play western instruments, but when it comes to the music’s feeling and texture, you need to be exposed to a place's culture to develop the sensibility for it,” He says. “It’s like being able to speak a language and to nail a particular accent [or the native way of communication], or for Chinese musicians to play Chopin, you know?”
He Zhanhao & the HKCO - The Butterfly Lovers @65. October 27 and 28, 2023. Hong Kong Cultural Centre, Tsim Sha Tsui.
Above The Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra's performance of The Butterfly Lovers which featured violinist Sunny Wong in 2005 (Video: YouTube / Sunny Wong)
Zabrina is the Senior Editor, Arts and Culture of Tatler Hong Kong. She specialises in performing arts, visual art and film. Her wanderlust was first fuelled by the Mighty Rovers Antarctica Expedition 2010. Over the years, she has interviewed A-list artists and filmmakers, including Oscar winners Chlóe Zhao and Tim Yip, Golden Horse winner Sylvia Chang, In the Mood for Love cinematographer Christopher Doyle, Pachinko author Min Jin Lee, and Coachella’s first Chinese solo singer Jackson Wang. She won gold at the WAN-IFRA Asian Media Awards for her 2021 feature on the waves of hate crimes targeting Asian Americans.
