One of Beijing's most promising composers moved to the United States in 1985 to develop his craft and create some of the most sublime works ever penned by a Chinese musician. However, most of his masterpieces have always been premiered in the West.

Tonight, for the first time, Chinese music lovers will hear a number of Zhou Long's works never performed in China.

Four of the five works performed by the China National Symphony Orchestra at Beijing Concert Hall will make their world premiere. The pieces include The Future of Fire, The Immortal, The Enlightened and Concerto for Drums.

More world premieres are in the pipeline this weekend. Spirit of Chimes and Dhyana will be played for the first time at the Beijing New Music Ensemble's concert of Zhou's chamber works on Sunday afternoon. It is being staged at the Currents Arts Space in northeastern Beijing's Huantie area.

The concert is free and Zhou will introduce the programme himself.

The 53-year-old maestro is excited about the weekend music fest and has high expectations for Chinese musicians' interpretation of his works.

"Chinese orchestras and ensembles may still have much to learn from their colleagues in the West, but in terms of performing Chinese works, Chinese musicians have a deep understanding that is irreplaceable," said Zhou. "Such understanding is exemplified in the subtle handle of ornaments, tempo and glissando that are characteristic of Chinese music."

Two pieces provide the bookends to Zhou's composing career, Concerto for Drums, which was written in 2006 and Taiping Drum, composed back in 1983.

"There are differences in my works of different phases, but the root of my composition hasn't changed through the years," said Zhou. "Though I have studied Western techniques, I have absorbed them into my vocabulary which is fundamentally Chinese."

Zhou began to study piano at 5 but gave it up at 7, because he didn't like it. His vocalist mother, hoping that her son would learn something about the arts, asked a professor from the Central Academy of Drama to teach him ancient Chinese poetry. When Zhou returned to music years later and eventually became a composer, he found that those early years were not wasted.

Inspired by poetry

Ancient Chinese poetry had a huge influence in his composition, and became the direct inspiration for some of his works, such as Poems from Tang, based on four works by famous Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907) poets, and Shi Jing Cantata, inspired by the Book of Songs, China's first anthology of poetry compiled in the 6th century BC.

Zhou has composed many works for Chinese instruments, and in his compositions for Western instruments, symbols of Chinese culture are ubiquitous. In his recent work Bell Drum Tower, he depicts the Bell Tower and Drum Tower in Beijing, which were part of his childhood memory.

The Ensemble Modern from Germany premiered the work in Germany in March and performed it at this year's Beijing Music Festival on October 12.

Zhou was one of the first students of composition enrolled in the Central Conservatory of Music after the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), and is regarded a member of the "golden generation" of contemporary Chinese composers. Many of this generation of composers, such as Tan Dun and Chen Qigang, have similar experiences of working in factories or the countryside during the "cultural revolution" and later studying abroad.

Zhou himself used to work in a farm in northeast China for five years during that dark period. After graduation from the Central Conservatory of Music, he went to further his study at the Columbia University in 1985.

For his first two years in the United States, Zhou said he could not compose any work because of the culture shock. He was confronted with many 20th-century composition techniques, which were very different from both the Chinese folk music traditions and the Russian school of music theory he learned in his conservatory in China.

Chinese elements

Zhou composed works using atonal techniques. For him, it was an expansion of his vision as a composer, but not an orientation that he would turn to. In recent years, he has come back to a tonal language. "After these years in the West, my music has been more abstract conceptually, but the materials I use still often come from the Chinese folk tradition," said Zhou.

In The Future of Fire for Orchestra and Mixed (or Upper Voice) Choir, the vibrant orchestration creates a feeling of explosive energy from beginning to end with intense bursts from a battery of percussion. The melodic material is taken from a popular love song from Northwest China's Shaanxi Province.

The image of fire came from Zhou's five years' farming. In spring, the farmers would set fire to dead grass to burn them off and prepare the land for planting. Sometimes these fires went out of control, and the dry wind would whip them into a ferocious blaze. These roaring winds and fierce fires made a profound impression on the composer to this day.

The Enlightened for Orchestra starts with a series of cluster-chords in the strings to create an obscure sound and a latent tension. The woodwind music gradually develops into a multi-layered, chant-like theme.

As the work progresses towards its climax, the tempo quickens and the meters become irregular. The last section returns to the mysterious atmosphere of the beginning. The work expresses the composer's awareness of the present world struggles. Again the core of the work is traditional Chinese culture.

"Ancient Chinese philosophy teaches that through proper behaviours exercising, dieting, breathing, meditation and positive mental attitude we can acquire physical, mental and spiritual well-being," explained Zhou in his programme notes.

Zhou's chamber work Spirit of Chimes was inspired by the sounds of some of the earliest surviving musical instruments from ancient China: bells, chime stones, and bone flutes, but it is written for violin, cello and piano.

In this trio, Zhou translated the real sound of those ancient Chinese instruments and combined them with his own imagination, in an effort to give new life to these ancient chimes.

"Zhou's success in the world is not only because of his composing techniques, but also because of his adherence to the Chinese tradition," said Guan Xia, director of China National Symphony Orchestra. "The concert of Zhou's symphonic works is the first one of our new Charm of the Chinese Music series, which stands for the national symphony orchestra's confirmation of his achievements."

The concert of Zhou's chamber works by the Beijing New Music Ensemble will be the group's first public performance. Founded in 2005 by a group of Chinese and foreign musicians, the ensemble is an independent music group dedicated to contemporary music.

"Zhou has incorporated his knowledge of Chinese folk music, his academic training and experiences in the West into a unified, personal and methodical language, and he is the best example of composers delivering Chinese messages on the international stage," said Eli Marshall, a Beijing-based American musician who is composer/conductor of Beijing New Music Ensemble.

(China Daily October 27, 2006)