Notes on the Music

The perpetuated verses of Liang and Zhu true love;

A rainbow shines and flowers flourish,
Amid the flowers butterflies flutter,
In pairs that never sever,
The spirits of Liang and Zhu ~ never perish.

Concerto for the violin Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, known outside China as the Butterfly Lovers, is programmatic music in one movement, based on the story of a young man and a young girl. The music draws on Shaoxing opera tunes. Its three sections recount three episodes characteristic of the story - love, protest and transfiguration:

• The exposition begins with a flute solo against a background of soft tremolo on the strings, followed by a beautiful melody on the oboe. With it unfolds a picture of a peaceful sunny spring day. Accompanied by the harp, the solo violin sings out a simple and graceful love theme and enters into a dialogue with the cello, which translates into music the first encounter of Liang Shanbo with the girl Zhu Yingtai in a boy's disguise at a wayside arbor and their avowal to become sworn brothers.
• A free cadenza leads to a lively rondo, in which the solo violin alternates with the orchestra. Three happy years of close affinity passed quickly and the two students had to return to their homes. An adagio utters their reluctance to part.
• The development opens with ominous foreshadows on the gong, cellos and bassoons. Brasses break in with a fierce and malicious theme, the theme of feudal forces. The violin pours out first the anxieties of Zhu Yingtai in free rhythm and then her protest in powerful syncopated chords.
• The two themes - the protest theme derived from the adagio and the feudal forces theme developed from the introduction - weave into a climax of conflict. Yingtai's protest against an undesired marriage. In the adagio that follows the violin and cello duet brings out a confession of Shanbo's and Yingtai's longings for each other when Shanbo visits Yingtai at her parlor.
• The music shift abruptly into san-ban (free rhythm) and kuai-ban (fast tempo). Yingtai pours out her grief to the heavens at Shanbo's tomb after his forlorn death. The device of jin-la-man-chang (singing freely upon a rushing accompaniment) borrowed from Shaoxing and Beijing operas ushers in another climax.
• After the violin finishes its last plaintive phrase, the whole orchestra bursts into a powerful tutti. The tomb opens and in plunges Yingtai. The music swells to the most important climax of the concerto.
• The flute and the harp imbue the recapitulation with a celestial bliss. The love theme reappears on the violin con sordino. Out of the tomb fly a pair of butterflies, which are believed to be the transfigurations of the deceased lovers.

Ref [of musical terms]: http://www.dolmetsch.com/musictheorydefs.htm

Source: "The Butterfly Lovers" violin concerto by He Zhanhao and Chen Gang, SMPH edition.

Notes: This is written out for all the lovers of this beautiful piece, to enhance the emotion, feeling and understanding of the storyline when listening to the recordings.