Customer Reviews

Water Passion after St. Matthew

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The concept for this contribution to the Passion 2000 project smacked so much of "political correctness" and world music crossover gimmickry that I almost passed it by. Tan Dun is a composer that intrigues me, but the idea of a Buddhist making understandable this most Christian of stories seemed quite a stretch to me. I shouldn't have worried at all. I have heard three of the four works from the Passion 2000 project, and Tan Dun's work is by far the deepest spiritually. It is an altogether remarkable work.

Tan Dun was given the Passion according to Matthew. Not content to deal merely with the passion story, Dun's work starts with the Baptism of Jesus, includes the Temptation in the Wilderness and then continues with the Last Supper, Garden of Gethsemane, the Betrayal/Denial, Trial, Crucifixion and atypically, ends with the Resurrection. Each section is set apart, almost as a tableau, with a ritualistic quality. Tan Dun's "orchestration" is simple but remarkably effective. The work is scored for choir, soprano and baritone soloists, three percussionists, violin and cello soloists and electronics. Many extended techniques are called for. The soprano has to test the greatest extent of her range with declamation that recalls Chinese opera, and the baritone is required to sing in overtones, influenced by Tuvan throat singing. The choir also plays stones, Tibetan bells and other small instruments. The percussionists get the most fascinating instruments. Tan Dun has long been interested in what he calls "water percussion" - instruments which use water as a significant part of their sounding. The effect in this work is elemental...the use of water sounds, stones (specified to have been taken from a river or the ocean) and other natural elements emphasizes the basic natural elements of the story.

The overall result is quite moving. The piece begins with a droned sound, in many ways reminiscent of the opening of Wagner's Ring cycle. Then the choir introduces a chorale melody that appears in various guises during the rest of the work. Each tableaux of the work is highly differentiated and given some recognizable sonic symbol. As the story progresses toward the cross, the music becomes wilder and more impassioned. The final section, which poetically represents the Resurrection, is as lovely a closing as I could imagine for this work...in many ways as moving as the music for the final scene of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Dun strips the passion story down to it's bare spiritual essentials and creates a work of almost ritual power.

The live recording is terrific. A better or cleaner one could not be asked for. The string soloists are marvelous, including the ever-fabulous Mark O'Connor on the violin. Both vocal soloists handle the demanding requirements of the piece with grace and aplomb and the choral singing is exquisite. The one thing missing in this wonderful CD is the visual element, which is quite pronounced in this piece, I gather in much the same way as it is in the work of Crumb. This is only a small matter though. In general, I find this to be the strongest, least traditional, and most spiritually moving work of the Passion 2000 cycle, at least that I've heard. Highly recommended!

Tan Dun, the 48-year-old composer from Hunan, China now living in the US, has entered the world of notoriety in composition based on successes with music scores for majestic Chinese films. It is not unusual, then, that his works for the stage and for orchestra and voices have a decided visual bent. In a recent premiere of a revised work commissioned by the LA Philharmonic for the opening of Disney Hall - "Paper Concerto for Paper Percussion and Orchestra" - it becomes even more understandable why his music is reaching a wide audience: it is simple, accessible, highly dependent on stagecraft and amplification using his favorite elements remembered from childhood - paper, stone, and water. And while he amazes with his ability to pull as much sound from his 'non-instruments' such as paper or water, his actual orchestral writing is repetitive and minimally interesting.

So it is with WATER PASSION. Again, the works should be seen as well as heard: the LA Master Chorale recently performed this work and while the various manipulations of water vessels and pourings are visually beautiful, the choral writing is thick to the point of indecipherable and the instrumental portion is reduced to incidental effects.

This recording does its best to capitalize on the absence of the visual and because it is a captured live recording, both the tension and message that is oddly present are as well done as can be expected. Time will tell whether this music is lasting and viable, but for the moment Tan Dun has found a responsive audience for his interesting investigation of the sounds of the world of nature. Grady Harp, April 05

I had the great pleasure to hear a performance of this at the Brooklyn Academy of Music soon after it premiered, and was moved deeply by the text and music and especially the use of water as an instrument.

This recording is very good, and I'm very glad to have it. The only downside is that, as good as the music is, it really is also a ritual of sorts that needs the visual component of the musicians and singers, all of whom are on stage and visible, and who move around. The instrumentalists playing the water are especially captivating to watch as they use their many objects and devices to get varying sounds from the water (such as clapping on the water for a percussive effect; or pulling water out of a bowl with a colander, so that the water flows down back into the bowl making a rain sound; splashing; and so on).

I think this is a very sensitive and moving interpretation of the texts, and the inclusion of water into the score brings in so many images of life and of the Biblical narrative: the waters of the womb and of our planet, as well as the waters of the flood, the parting of the Sea of Reeds, the dew of Harmon, the waters of baptism.

As one reviewer mentioned, who was surprised at what he/she was getting into, this is some pretty avante-garde stuff - this is not Bach or Haydn. But it's not also not as extreme as Schoenberg. Tan Dun is part of a legacy of exploration that is able to quite beautifully bridge the worlds of harmonic and tonal forms of the old masters with the complete rejection of harmony and tonality of the 1900s serialists and atonalists, while bringing in some of Cage's chance-style approach to music and the ritualistic nature of Meredith Monk or Robert Wilson.

Great stuff, and I'm glad to finally have a copy on CD. I just hope they do a DVD of it sometime so people can see as well as hear the full grandeur of this piece.

First, I love Tan Dun's music, well represented by three of my favorite CDs: Kronos Quartet's performance of "Ghost Opera"; "Bitter Love," music taken from his opera "The Peony Pavilion"; and his soundtrack from the beautiful movie "Hero." "Water Passion," of course, is quite different, being a kind of sacred cantata (especially different from his film music, of which there is much). Nonetheless, many of the elements that are familiar to Tan Dun fans are here, particularly in the vocals and in his use of ambient natural sounds, in this case water. It is tempting to try to describe the music itself, but to paraphrase a well known comment: talking about music is like dancing about architecture. In the case of "Water Passion," it is best just to take a chance and get the CD; the samples here are inadequate to give a real impression of the whole. Like the music of Toru Takemitsu, each of Tan Dun's works is completely unique; liking one doesn't mean you will like another. But, as with most great music, the reward comes with repeated, close, and open-minded listening.

To mark the year 2000, the International Bach Academy commissioned four composers from vastly different backgrounds to write new passions. These were Sofia Gubaidulina (St. John Passion), Osvaldo Golijov (La Pasion segun San Marcos), Wolfgang Rihm (Deus Passus) and finally Tan Dun with his WATER PASSION AFTER ST. MATTHEW.

In terms of scoring, Tan Dun's passion is the most unusual. His ensemble consists only of choir, soprano and baritone soloists, three percussionists, violin and cello soloists and electronics. The players also produce sound through manipulating bowls of water and knocking about stones -- this is a powerful visual element that is sadly missing here, though DVD recordings of his Water Concerto and his opera TEA: A Mirror of Soul can make up for it. The soprano in the WATER PASSION articulates her lines more along the lines of Chinese opera than the western tradition. Tan Dun has spent his entire career moving between "serious" works for classical music concert halls and more popular writing for films and television. The WATER PASSION is squarely within Tan Dun's avant-garde tradition, with its occasionally harsh tones and wild gesticulations. Tan Dun sets only a few lines from each of the episodes in St. Matthew's gospel, creating a mood but eschewing straightforward narration. Interaction between characters is rare, but dramatic when it does occur, as in the second movement "Temptations" where the soprano represents the devil and the baritone Jesus.

I must disagree with my fellow reviewer that Tan Dun's is the most spiritual of the four commissioned passions. Surely he had not yet heard the Gubaidulina, and Gubaidulina is the only one of the bunch who sincerely believes in the account that was to be set to music. Tan Dun's relationship to the Christian story seems a very idiosyncratic one, especially in the final movement when he represents Christ's resurrection with the "A time to..." passage from Ecclesiastes 3 instead of the Gospel text.

Nonetheless, musically this is a powerful work, and one that doesn't overstay its welcome though over 90 minutes long. Tan Dun's blend of Chinese sounds and the Western avant-garde is coherent here, never descending to crossover gimmickry. Until I heard the applause at the end, I had a hard time believing this was a live recording, as Sony's engineers have preserved a sense of space and delicacy typical of the best studio recordings.

Probably my own fault. I was looking for something more like the Spirited Away soundtrack. This album is VERY experimental.