Music Director Xian Zhang introduces Seattle audiences to the dramatic, sensuous and completely unique sound world of Peking opera with Qigang Chen’s Iris Dévoilée (Iris Unveiled). Writing for Peking and Western-style singers and traditional Chinese instruments, he evokes Iris, the Greek goddess of the rainbow, and “eternal feminine” aspects — simple, coy, wanton, sentimental, jealous, melancholy, hysterical, lustful …. Balancing this music is the dark drama of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony. Composed at a moment of political oppression and personal danger, its ambiguities and secrets reveal themselves differently to each listener, though its urgent and ecstatic finale always thrills.
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