Sheng's 'Silent Temple'

Synopsis

On today’s date 2000, at the University of Richmond in Virginia, the Shanghai Quartet premiered the String Quartet No. 4 by composer Bright Sheng.

Sheng was born in Shanghai in 1955, but since the 80s he’s made the United States his home and has earned an enviable reputation as both a composer and teacher. But in the late 1960s, during the tumultuous years of Madame Mao’s Cultural Revolution, he worked as a pianist and percussionist in a Chinese folk music and dance troupe near the Tibetan border. His String Quartet No. 4 is subtitled Silent Temple, which he explained that title as follows:

“In the early 1970s I visited an abandoned Buddhist temple in northwest China. As all religious activities were completely forbidden at the time, the temple, still renowned among the Buddhist community all over the world, was unattended and on the brink of turning into a ruin … In spite of the appalling condition of the temple, it was still a grandiose and magnificent structure … I could almost hear the praying and chanting of the monks, as well as the violence committed to the temple and the monks by the Red Guards.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Bright Sheng (b. 1955): String Quartet No. 4 (Silent Temple); Shanghai Quartet; BIS 1138

On This Day

Births

• 1902 - British composer Sir William Walton, in Oldham

• 1936 - British composer Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, in Broadstairs

Deaths

• 1697 - German composer and organist Nicolaus Bruhns, 32, in Husum

• 1888 - French composer Charles-Henri Alkan, 75, in Paris

• 1911 - French composer and organist Alexandre (Felix) Guilmant, 74, in Meudon

• 1924 - British composer Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, 71, in London

• 2001 - American jazz pianist and composer John Lewis, a member of the Modern Jazz Quartet, 80, in New York

Premieres

• 1795 - possible premiere of Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 2, in Vienna, with the composer as soloist. This concerto was written and premiered before Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1, which was, however, published first.

• 1806 - Beethoven: Leonore Overture No. 3, as part of the second, revised version of the opera Fidelio, at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna

• 1836 - Wagner: opera Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love), in Magdeburg at the Stadttheater. Wagner’s libretto is based on Shakespeare’s play Measure for Measure.

• 1874 - Dvorak: Symphony No. 3, in Prague

• 1879 - Tchaikovsky: opera Eugene Onegin, in Moscow at the Malïy (Small) Theater (Julian date: Mar. 17)

• 1882 - Glazunov: Symphony No. 1, in St. Petersburg (Julian date: Mar. 17)

• 1892 - Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 1, (first movement only), in Moscow, Vasily Safanov conducting and with the composer as soloist (Julian date: Mar. 17)

• 1911 - Chadwick: Suite Symphonique, by the Philadelphia Orchestra, with the composer conducting

• 2000 - Bright Sheng: String Quartet No. 4, in Richmond, Virginia, by the Shanghai String Quartet

Others

• 1871 - Royal Albert Hall is formally opened in London by Queen Victoria