Proms 2004: Zhou, Casken, Hillborg, Vine, Talbot

Extract

The Immortal by the Chinese-American Zhou Long (b. 1953) – commissioned by the BBC World Service (apparently its first-even Proms commission) and premièred by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under its out-going chief conductor, Leonard Slatkin, on 20 July – is a tribute ‘to the influence of Chinese artists and intellectuals in the twentieth century’, as the composer notes in the score. He adds: ‘Having grown up in an artistic family during the time of the Cultural Revolution, I know from personal experience the struggles and hardships that past generations have endured to remain true to these eternal ideals’. Past generations? Zhou himself was sent to labour in the fields; a back injury had him re-allocated to a song-and-dance troupe, where he encountered notionally prohibited western instruments among the Chinese ones – a stylistic integration he maintains even when writing exclusively for the modern symphony orchestra.