Tan Dun: Ghost Opera

Joan Jeanrenaud (Artist), Dun Tan (Artist), Kronos Quartet (Artist), David Harrington (Artist), Hank Dutt (Artist), John Sherba (Artist), Wu-Man Zheng (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 18, 1997)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Nonesuch
• ASIN: B000005J4K
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #130,566 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Written by Chinese composer Tan Dun, this is a dramatic five-movement composition for string quartet and pipa (a relative of the lute), with vocalizations and percussive effects from water, metal, stone and paper, performed on this recording by Wu Man.
Genre: Classical Music
Media Format: Compact Disk
Rating:
Release Date: 18-MAR-1997

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Like Nothing You've Ever Heard, January 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Tan Dun: Ghost Opera (Audio CD)

The first time I listened to this CD after bringing it home I thought "...ten dollars. I just threw away $10 on this thing." After giving it another chance I heard passages that made me jump out of my chair. After hearing it through the third time - on headphones - I was totally hooked.

The major problem this CD will have for most listeners is that it is genuinely original. There is simply nothing else that sounds like it. The Kronos Quartet are well established as avant garde chamber musicians, and in combination with Chinese musicans Tan Dun and Wu Man they have created a truly spooky, and playful piece of music. It has a very asian feel to it, with moments of lyric dissonace when Wu Man races with her PiPa (the traditional Chinese lute) accompanied by the western musicians with violins and cellos wailing over the excited shouting of the ghosts to each other across the melody. The last moments of the 4th movement in particular sound like the Bernard Hermann score for "Psycho" ending in the thunderclap crash of a temple gong and the unison shout of the ghosts. "Ghost Opera" is a long, truly strange tone poem of the restless dead which takes some getting used to, but it rewards the effort. It is that rarest thing - music to dream by.

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Opposites Attract, July 1, 2000

By 

Vargiu Riccardo James (Bologna, Italy) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tan Dun: Ghost Opera (Audio CD)

Ghost Opera was my first Kronos Quartet CD, and I loved it right from the start, though it took some time for me to understand it in depth - and have I really understood it after all? (As with all complex works of art, one never can tell.)

In my opinion, the first thing one who wishes to get to know Ghost Opera should do is just lie down - eyes tightly shut - and listen to it, without any expectations, letting the music taunt one's senses at first, and then relieve them... Oppose no resistance - it might be painful at the beginning, but that will make it all the sweeter in the end. Once the senses have adapted to this extraordinary music, its apparently undecipherable code will suddenly become clear and the message Tan Dun wished to convey will start making sense at last.

To me this CD is about anxiety and calmness, violence and peace, life and death. One will decide what the meaning is for oneself, of course: what matters is that a meaning will come. Bach and Tan Dun, the past and the present, do come together, and the result is something extremely sophisticated and fresh at once, something altogether mesmerizing.

I have no authority to say so, but I think Ghost Opera to be a most incredible achievement of contemporary classical music.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the most inventive works for String Quartet yet!!, August 12, 2001

By 

Andrew Bisset (Marshall, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tan Dun: Ghost Opera (Audio CD)

I stumbled onto this cd by accident and I'm glad I did. I've heard all sorts of new art music but never anything like this. Tan Dun has done an amazing job with writing this work. He requires the quartet to engage in all sorts of expanded techniques from the bowed gong to vocals and chants. For these techniques the Kronos Quartet must be equally commended for pulling such a difficult work off so well.

The work itself represents a trinity of NOW, PAST, and FOREVER. Dun opens the work by fusing the NOW (represented by the String Quartet and the Pipa played by Wu Man) with the Past (represented by quotes from a Bach prelude, folk songs, monk chants, and a Shakespeare soliloquy. As the work progresses the NOW joins with FOREVER (represented by water, stones, metal, and paper) to create some very exciting and enticing episodes of sound.

Overall, the Ghost Opera is definitely a work worth hearing. It's not your Tosca but that is okay because Tosca has been done. Dun has succeeded in creating something new that still is fairly accessible to the general public. I must warn you however that this is not background music. It is a work that you must LISTEN to. Those who take the time to understand this work will be emotionally and intellectually moved. Isn't that what music is about?