Xilin Wang: Symphony No. 3

Xilin Wang is one of China's most important composers. He is characterized by his expressive, effective compositional style (and his subversive tendencies). He studied composition and conducting at the Shanghai Conservatory and was awarded the highest Chinese state prize in 1963. However, due to his criticism of Mao's cultural policies, Wang was sentenced to 14 years of exile and forced labor, during which he suffered persecution and torture. After the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1978, Wang returned to Beijing and familiarized himself with the music of the European avant-garde.

Since then, he has incorporated sequencing, minimalism, tone clusters and folkloristic elements into his works, such as the important "Symphony No. 3". The four-movement work is considered a "serious meditation" on the ten-year-long inhumane "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" and was written under the impression of the massacre on Tiananmen Square. Wang dedicates it to "the people with high ideals who strive for democracy and freedom all over the world". "I don't just want to write for myself, but to portray this long history and the many aspects of humanity it encompasses; I am composing for all those who have died. "Symphony" (literally: "sounding together") - Wang gives this supposedly outdated genre new life and unexpected power. Xiling Wang's "Symphony No. 3" was recorded by the China National Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Swiss conductor Emmanuel Siffert in a first-class performance and can be regarded as exemplary in its interpretation.

Xilin Wang (b. 1936)

• Xilin: Symphony No. 3, Op. 26

Classical Explorer19th July 2024