Debra Li

    debra_lidan@163.com

    THE Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra is home after a long summer. The orchestra’s new season will kick off Sunday night with a concert featuring the works of Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky.

    The SSO’s music director Christian Ehwald will conduct the show at the Shenzhen Concert Hall, and pianist Yin Chengzong will collaborate.

    Yin, a classical pianist, is perhaps best known in the West for his “Yellow River Piano Concerto,” an arrangement he based on “Yellow River Cantata,” that he performed in many Western theaters since the 1980s.

    He won an award at the World Youth Peace and Friendship Festival in Vienna, Austria, at 18, and the next year, he was sent to study at the Leningrad Conservatory. At 21, he and American pianist Susan Starr shared the second prize at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1962. In 1965, Yin joined the then Central Orchestra (predecessor of the Symphony Orchestra of China) as a soloist. He emigrated to the United States in 1983 and continued his music career on the international stage.

    At the concert Sunday night, Yin will perform Rachmaninoff’s “Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor,” one of the composer’s most enduringly popular pieces. The work, a masterpiece of structural perfection that emphasizes the lyrical features of the piano, has inspired many musicians after Rachmaninoff.

    The second theme of the third movement provided the basis for Frank Sinatra’s 1945 tune “Full Moon and Empty Arms.” The theme of the second movement appears in Eric Carmen’s 1975 ballad “All by Myself.” And the opening movement’s theme appears in Muse’s 2001 song “Space Dementia.”

    For the second half of the concert, the SSO will perform Tchaikovsky’s “Symphony No. 5 in E Minor,” one of his most popular pieces. The second movement, in particular, is considered classic Tchaikovsky: well crafted, colorfully orchestrated, and with a memorable melody for a solo horn.

    The overall trajectory of this piece reminds the listener of Beethoven’s 5th and exhibits the narrative paradigm of tragedy to triumphant. It was very popular during WWII. One of the most notable performances of the piece was by the Leningrad Radio Symphony Orchestra during the Siege of Leningrad City on the night of Oct. 20, 1941, which aimed at cheering up the citizens as the fighting continued. That show was also broadcast live to London.

    Half of the tickets will sell for only 50 yuan (US$8) and 100 yuan. Members of the SSO Club and Shenzhen Concert Hall Club can enjoy discounts while students and those older than 60 can enjoy half-price tickets.