Synopsis

On today’s date in the year 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 back in the late 1960s, during the tumultuous years of Madame Mao’s “Cultural Revolution,” Sheng worked as a pianist and percussionist in a Chinese folk music and dance troupe near the Tibetan border. Sheng’s String Quartet No. 4 is subtitled “Silent Temple.” He explains that title as follows:

“In the early 1970s I visited an abandoned Buddhist temple in north-west 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