SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—Violist Francisco Figueroa was deeply impressed with the music of Shen Yun Performing Arts, attending for the first time at the Centro de Bellas Artes Luis A Ferré in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Feb. 8.
Shen Yun, based in New York, is the world’s premier
classical Chinese dance company, and has become renowned in the arts communities for more than dance.
“It has beautiful music, it is a great gift for humanity. The concept is fantastic. I am very pleased and grateful to be here,” said Mr. Figueroa, who retired from the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra in 2017 after 40 years.
Through
music and dance, Shen Yun aims to revive 5,000 years of Chinese civilization and share with the world China before communism.
The music that so impressed Mr. Figueroa was entirely original, composed anew each year in house to pair with the new season’s program, and performed live by Shen Yun’s unique orchestras. Blending East and West, Shen Yun
orchestras include ancient Chinese instruments as well as the expected classical instruments in the orchestra.
“I think it is a fantastic blend; they managed to [create] the effect, the projection of music is fantastic,” Mr. Figueroa said.
In the ensemble, Mr. Figueroa picked out the erhu, a two-stringed, thousands-of-years-old instrument played with a bow, and the pipa, an ancient Chinese lute.
As Shen Yun explains on its website, these
ancient instruments bring to the music sounds that cannot otherwise be replicated. Like this, Shen Yun combines the two great traditions, bringing forth the grandeur of classical music alongside the soul-stirring melodies of ancient China.
As a symphony musician of 40 years, Mr. Figueroa understood what a feat this is in the
classical music field. He said the closest the canon has to music that does similarly is the “Butterfly Lovers” violin concerto, a seminal work that brought Chinese music into the classical repertoire but written for all Western orchestral instruments.
Mr. Figueroa said he was also impressed with how the music was written specifically for each dance piece, and so well matched. He felt the music depicted the
characters they saw on stage and helped “project” the story to the audience. He said the music could be enjoyed alone, but together with the dance and story was “a perfect combination.”
“I like that very much,” he said. “They managed to get variety because there are different stories, different situations. They do a good job!”
Reporting by Sally Sun and Catherine Yang.
