Four Movements for piano trio (1990)

Bright Sheng declares that his greatest challenge as a composer is to integrate Asian and Western cultures without compromising the integrity of either. Having, on the one hand, worked in a folk music and dance troupe during the Chinese Cultural Revolution and, on the other, having studied with Leonard Bernstein and George Perle in the US – where he has won numerous awards since he moved there with “no friends, no English, no money” in 1982 – he is well placed to solve the problems. “I’m a mixture of both cultures,” he says, “but I consider myself both 100% American and 100% Chinese.” The Four Movements for piano trio, one of the earliest of several chamber works for standard Western ensembles, is a interesting and entertaining example. In the exotic melodic inflections of the strings and the sparing use of harmony in a mainly percussive piano part the Chinese background is unmistakable; at the same time there are passages where it seems not far removed in style from Ravel and Bartók.

The composer’s own programme note is as follows: ‘The folkloric style and prelude-like first movement of the Four Movements for Piano Trio is constructed through the use of heterophony, a device typical of Asian music. The second movement is based on a humorous and joyful folk song from Se-Tsuan. In the third movement, a savage dance, the melody grows through a series of “Chinese sequences” (my term to describe a type of melodic development each time the initial motif is repeated, constantly lengthening its duration and widening the tessitura). The last movement evokes a lonesome nostalgia.’