DATE: Tuesday, November 18, 1997            TAG: 9711180037

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E5   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY SUE VanHECKE, CORRESPONDENT 
                                            LENGTH:   64 lines

MUSIC OF EAST, WEST FUSED IN CONCERT BY YOUTH ORCHESTRAS

IT ALL STARTED on the Internet. That's where Gregory Barnes, director of the Bay Youth Orchestras of Virginia, read about Robert Ian Winstin, the first American composer commissioned to write for a modern Chinese symphony orchestra.

Winstin received a mysterious phone call from a Chinese official offering a commission for a piano and orchestra work for the Shanghai Symphony.

``I applied for a grant to bring (Winstin) here to play his piano concerto,'' Barnes said recently from his home in Columbia S.C. ``Then I was pondering what other music to put on the program with it. I knew that there were a number of Chinese composers that live in the United States, and I thought that might make an interesting com-parison.''

The concept for the the Bay Youth Orchestras' program tonight - music written by Western composers for Eastern orchestras, and vice versa - was hatched.

Joining the symphony and concert orchestras will be soloists playing traditional Chinese instruments, and pianist Winstin.

For selections to fill out his program, Barnes turned to Virginia Symphony music director and Bay Youth Orchestras board member JoAnn Falletta. She recently directed the premiere performance and recording of Chen Yi's ``Ge Xu (Antiphony),'' which the Bay Youth Symphony will perform tonight.

``She suggested to start with the music of Chen Yi,'' Barnes said. ``I contacted (Yi) and she suggested some pieces also. I tried to feature some traditional Chinese instruments on the program. I'd heard about the pipa concerto by Zhou Long, and I ended up also with two pieces for erhu and orchestra.''

Gao Hong will perform on the pipa, a four-string plucked instrument similar to a lute. Hong and the symphony will perform Zhou Long's ``Peking Drum,'' which blends nuances of traditional Chinese music with a more modernist compositional approach.

Wang Guowei will play the erhu, a two-string bowed instrument most commonly used in Chinese folk ensembles. Thanks to the development of sophisticated performance techniques and a growing repertoire, it is now considered a solo instrument as well.

Composers Yi and Long were deeply effected by China's cultural revolution of the 1960s. As a teenager, Yi was forced into labor in the countryside for two years, returning home to eventually become concertmaster and composer with the Beijing Opera Troupe.

In 1983, Yi composed the first Chinese viola concerto and went on to become the first woman in China to earn a master of arts degree in composition. Yi later journeyed to the United States, where she received a doctorate in musical arts from Columbia University.

Long was also sent to work at a state farm at an early age. He would go on to graduate from the Central Conservatory in Beijing and become composer-in-residence with the Broadcasting Symphony of China. He came to America in 1985 and also received a doctorate from Columbia.

Robert Ian Winstin, who will be performing his Piano Concerto No. 2, is an award-winning composer and conductor who began his piano studies at age 5, went on to mentor under Lukas Foss and was a score assistant to Leonard Bernstein.

Tonight's program marks a farewell of sorts for Barnes, who, for the last year and a half, has been commuting between South Carolina and Hampton Roads.

``It will be my last concert as the regular music director,'' he said. ``I'll probably be doing some guest appearances. I decided it was time that the orchestra had someone who was local and could watch out for things a little more up close.''

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