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Percussionist brings nature's power to life onstage

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2015-04-10 15:52China Daily Editor: Si Huan
Austrian percussionist Martin Grubinger joins hands with Tan Dun to present Tan's concerto The Tears of Nature in China. Photo provided to China Daily

Austrian percussionist Martin Grubinger joins hands with Tan Dun to present Tan's concerto The Tears of Nature in China. Photo provided to China Daily

Martin Grubinger mounted the stage in a plain black T-shirt, while everyone else in the orchestra sported black dresses and tuxedos.

The 31-year-old percussionist from Austria was making his debut performance in China, playing Chinese composer Tan Dun's creation The Tears of Nature with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the composer himself at the orchestra's new concert hall on April 4. On Saturday, Tan will bring the production to Beijing, conducting the China Philharmonic Symphony and presenting the piece with Grubinger at the Forbidden City Concert Hall.

In Shanghai, Grubinger played dozens of percussive instruments, flicking, rubbing and scraping them to draw out unexpected sounds. The effort more than justified the wardrobe decision of the musician: During the first piece he even performed a short ritual dance, wandering among the orchestra members, clicking two small rocks as an instrument.

The Tears of Nature is a three-movement percussion concerto. Each movement of the concerto was inspired by a natural catastrophe: The opening movement, Threat of Nature, was prompted by Tan's memories of the Sichuan earthquake in 2008; the second, Tears of Nature, by the 2011 tsunami in Japan; the final movement, Dance of Nature, was inspired by the energy and confidence shown by the residents of New York after Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

The concerto was commissioned by the North German Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2013. It is a tribute to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring for the 100th anniversary year of that piece's creation, Tan says.

The physically exhausting work taxed the sweating percussionist so much, he joked afterward, that he looked as if he was "coming straight out of the swimming pool".

But he was particularly impressed by the rich colors of the piece, which he said made the concerto especially popular among young audiences in Europe.

"The first movement is so intense and emotional, while the second movement has very simple but beautiful melodies that you may hum on the way home," Grubinger says.

Grubinger sees percussion as the most globalized of all instruments. It exists widely in all kinds of music traditions, playing an important part in tango, salsa, African drumming, funk and fusion.

"Maestro Tan, for me, is maybe the perfect composer for percussion because he is the person who connects all these words," Grubinger says, because Tan successfully combines the Western classical music composition with influences of his home country.

Tan says Chinese music has long been excluded from the Western classical music canon.

"If you want to convince Westerners that China has more than 2,000 years of musical history, percussion is a good start, because it is original and authentic of China, like Beethoven to Germany and Puccini to Italy," he says.

If you go

7:30 pm, April 11. Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing, inside Zhongshan Park, west of Tian'anmen Square, Dongcheng district. 400-600-9059.

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