Ghost Opera
List Price:
Our Price: $9.88
You Save: $1.10 (10%)
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Buy Used: from $5.00 (click here)
Category: Music CD
See more new music releases
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store
Canadian Music Store
Music CD Cover
Edition: Music CDCD Release Date: 1997-03-18
Music Label: Nonesuch
Soundtracks:
- Ghost Opera For String Quartet And Pipa With Water, Stones, Paper, And Metal: Act I: Bach, Monks, And Shakespeare Meet In Water
- Ghost Opera For String Quartet And Pipa With Water, Stones, Paper, And Metal: Act II: Earth Dance
- Ghost Opera For String Quartet And Pipa With Water, Stones, Paper, And Metal: Act III: Dialogue With 'Little Cabbage'
- Ghost Opera For String Quartet And Pipa With Water, Stones, Paper, And Metal: Act IV: Metal And Stone
- Ghost Opera For String Quartet And Pipa With Water, Stones, Paper, And Metal: Act V: Song oOf Paper
Free Music Notes for Ghost Opera
Free Music Review: Among Tan Dun's works without total crossover gimmickry, but less satisfying that some of his other pieces
Hit: 3 Stars
The Chinese composer Tan Dun has gained great acclaimed over the last 15 years or so for his blend of Western avant-garde stylings and Chinese folk materials. Born in 1957, the composer was sent into the countryside during the Cultural Revolution to participate in peasant work. He made lemonade out of these lemons by absorbing a great deal of folk music, and signing onto a Peking Opera troupe that visited the area. Tan Dun came to New York in the mid-1980s, studying with figures such as John Cage, and he began to work towards a synthesis of East and West.
"Ghost Opera" for string quartet and the Chinese pipa lute (1994) is a good example of Tan Dun's mature music, quoting from both the Western canon and Chinese folk material and delighting in unorthodox sources of sound. The performers not only play their customary instruments, but also rip up paper, splash water around in elaborately lit glass bowls. There's no real plot, instead the fragments that make up the brief libretto give the work a ritual-like atmosphere, harkening back to the village shaman that so enchanted the young composer. It takes talent to follow a quotation from a Bach prelude with a Peking Opera standard, not to mention some avant-garde clanging and scratching, and still make the whole work generally cohesive.
The Kronos Quartet were the dedicatees of the piece along with Wu Man. They've toured the piece around the world and even recorded it on video. Their performance here thus has an air of definitiveness about it. Still, at times these American musicians seem a bit uncomfortable with the Chinese material, and it would be interesting to hear a recording of the piece by an all-Chinese ensemble.
While there's much technical invention in GHOST OPERA, and the work as a whole avoids simple crossover gimmickry for something much more rich and rigorous, my attention was lagging at time. I believe that the synthesis of East and West Tan Dun was looking for was better realized in his multimedia concerto Tan Dun: THE MAP (available on a fine Deutsche Grammophon DVD). Fans of the composer who know more than his popular Hollywood soundtrack work and know what they would be getting into in this disc might find it worth picking up.
Classical Music CDs
Music Genres
Top music charts in An Eclectic Mix (2008)
McLean: Forgotten ShadowsRelease date: 2000-05-23; Music CD
Best price: $1.99
Price in other shops:
Beth Custer, Sandbox Trio - NocturnalisRelease date: 1999-11-01; Music CD
Best price: $9.98
Price in other shops:
Buffalo Daughter - IRelease date: 2002-03-05; Music CD
Best price: $2.50
Price in other shops:
Jorane - The You and the NowRelease date: 2005-03-29; Music CD
Best price: $1.34
Price in other shops:
![Across The Universe [Deluxe Edition] Image](/images/Across-The-Universe-Deluxe-Edition-B000WCBPOG-X.jpg)
Original Soundtrack - Across The Universe [Deluxe Edition]Release date: 2007-10-23; Music CD
Best price: $9.78
Price in other shops:
Polka Comes to Your Haus!Release date: 1993-07-01; Music CD
Best price: $28.99
Tord Gustavsen Trio - Being ThereRelease date: 2007-06-05; Music CD
Best price: $10.99
Price in other shops:
Mario Adnet - Jobim JazzMusic CD
Best price: $10.97
Price in other shops:
Bobi Cespedes - RezosRelease date: 2003-02-04; Music CD
Best price: $0.95
Price in other shops:
Ghost OperaRelease date: 1997-03-18; Music CD
Best price: $6.40
Price in other shops:
Top Rated Albums
Tan Dun - HeroRelease date: 2004-08-24; Music CD
Best price: $8.71
Price in other shops:
Kronos QuartetRelease date: 1990-10-25; Music CD
Best price: $6.99
Price in other shops:
Wu Man - Chinese Music for the PipaRelease date: 1995-04-16; Music CD
Best price: $11.23
Price in other shops:
Tan Dun - Tea, A Mirror of Soul / Lundy, Fu, Gillet, Richardson, Liang, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo OperaRelease date: 2005-03-08; DVD
Best price: $18.97
Price in other shops:
Chinese Traditional & Contemporary MusicRelease date: 1996-05-07; Music CD
Best price: $8.88
Price in other shops:
Tan Dun - The BanquetRelease date: 2006-09-18; Music CD
Best price: $13.78
Price in other shops:
Tan Dun: The MapRelease date: 2004-09-28; DVD
Best price: $15.39
Price in other shops:
Bitter LoveRelease date: 1999-08-17; Music CD
Best price: $3.70
Price in other shops:
Symphony 1997Release date: 1997-07-01; Music CD
Best price: $4.49
Price in other shops:
Water Passion After St MatthewRelease date: 2002-11-19; Music CD
Best price: $22.00
Price in other shops: