Chinese Schmalz

By William Bender

When the Philadelphia Orchestra finished playing The Yellow River Concerto in Peking last September, Conductor Eugene Ormandy signaled for the composer to share the bows. Out came two men and two women. To a Westerner listening to the work, the four might just as well have been Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Cecile Chaminade and Joan Baez. Actually, they were a committee from the Central Philharmonic Society of the People's Republic of China, perhaps the country's foremost composer. The event was the highlight of the Philadelphia's tour of China, the first such by an American orchestra. The moment is now recalled by a new RCA LP recorded back home.

Composition by committee? Why not? Most of our Broadway musicals and pop records, to cite but two examples, are produced by committees or their equivalent. The Yellow River Concerto turns out to be delectable schmalz that rivals such an old classical "pops" favorite as the Warsaw Concerto.

Exactly how the committee collaborated on the concerto has not yet been divulged by Chinese authorities, who do not encourage individual artistic expression. It is known that Pianist Yin Cheng-chung wrote the solo music. Like some Western works for solo instrument and orchestra, Yellow River has a program: it starts by invoking the day-to-day life on the river, ends with Mao's call to arms, and the defense of the river as a symbol of the entire country. Sophisticated Western listeners would have no trouble picking Yellow River apart, but for all its naivete, it is adroitly orchestrated and engagingly melodic. In addition, the concerto is genuinely historic-the first real specimen of China's current efforts to absorb Western music. "The fact is," says New York's Daniel Epstein, 27, the superb piano soloist on the LP, "that Yellow River is the favorite music of one-fifth of the world's population, and that alone merits its beingheard." William Bender

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