Tibetan Dance (2001)

These chamber works show Sheng as a skilled and expressive composer, who very effectively communicates with his listeners...these scores leave a powerful impression on the audience, and combine Chinese and Western music elements to expand their expressive vocabulary. The listeners at the concert were suitably impressed; Sheng seems to have struck the right chord.

Tibetan Dance [is] comprised of three movements inspired respectively by a Japanese garden, a folk hymn know as “Cabbage,” and a Tibetan folk dance....The trio’s “Prelude” began with a simple, serene music, pleasantly strange....The middle movement, “Song,” was slow and somewhat minimalist, just the violin and clarinet creating the mood. The work was named for its final movement, which was alive with dance rhythms knocked by Juillet’s fist on her violin and Sheng’s on the piano’s upper ledge. Morales’ clarinet bleated and blared above Sheng’s low register piano boogey, and Juillet’s part included a pattern of foot stomps. It was fun music...