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Classical hero

February 2013

  • David Knight

As a master of film soundtracks and concert halls, Melbourne-bound Academy Award winning composer Tan Dun is one of classical music’s most renowned contemporary figures.

 

Conducting the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra through pieces from his Martial Arts Trilogy (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero and The Banquet), Dun’s work mixes traditional Chinese elements with western influences. Away from film, Dun composed the operas The First Emperor and Marco Polo and was commissioned to write Symphony 1997: Heaven Earth Mankind, which was performed by cellist Yo-Yo Ma for Hong Kong’s transfer of sovereignty in 1997.

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s Director of Artistic Planning Huw Humphreys says that Dun is “both a state of the art classical composer and a film composer of the highest order”.

“Thinking back on the greatest composers of the 20th Century, so many of them were intimately involved with the film world. People like Shostakovich and Vaughn Williams, a lot of the people who moved to Hollywood from Europe in the 30s and 40s. Tan Dun at the moment is a vital link between the cinema and concert hall. He is absolutely pre-eminent in both. He’s written scores for such celebrated movies, as the three we’re presenting in a few weeks, yet the world’s greatest orchestras have commissioned him. For that reason alone it’s a very exciting project.”

The Grammy and Academy Award winner studied at Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music before studying at Columbia University. As a conductor he has led the world’s great orchestras including the London Symphony Orchesta, the New York Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. With his film scores, Dun in best known for the Martial Arts Trilogy, which includes the Ang Lee directed Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), a film which opened mainstream western audiences’ eyes to Chinese cinema, but he has also composed for Hollywood (the underrated Denzel Washington vehicle and thriller Fallen).

Humphreys says the Martial Arts Trilogy will be primarily a concert and not a recreation of a film’s score.

“Crucially this is first and foremost a concert, there is footage from the films but those are used to illustrate the music rather than the other way around in the standard screening of a concert.”


Tan Dun Martial Arts Trilogy, Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne, on March 1 and 2

artscentremelbourne.com.au

mso.com.au

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