Wailing
for large orchestra (2008)
- Premiere Premiered by the Minnesota Orchestra, conducted by Osmo Vänskä, November 7, 2008.
Excerpt from a performance by the Holland Symfonia, conducted by Hans Leedners
Program Notes
This piece was inspired by my experiences in a small remote town in a mountainous area of Northern China when I was 5 years old. I can still vividly remember a scene during that wintry season, when some robust young peasants were wailing and crying desperately while others were playing out-of-tune brass and percussion folk instruments in all ranges and with full force. They paraded past every house. I was told that someone had just passed away. Later the same strikingly mournful sound echoed upon the sterile earth once again, but this time, a young girl was getting married. The young men of the village got drunk after the procession, then went back to their group and played even more wildly.
Many years later, when I recalled my memory of these experiences, I suddenly understood why they were wailing so sadly, because that was the only way peasants could set free their repressed sorrow from years and years of weariness. They sang the same tunes for both funerals and weddings as if they were telling people that life is only a drama of birth, aging, ailing and eventually dying.
– Wang Lu
