Update Title: C7ABD8A0-131A-4117-9FCB-2D1DADCB5F39

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Early-20th-century China was faced with severe foreign imperialism which prompted defensive patriots of the time to forge new political and philosophical theories in attempt to lead the country out of national threat. Shanghai then became a crucial city that would reshape the fate of the Chinese, as industrialism of the grandest scale allowed the working class to unite in search of a new future. The outcome was the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921, with its first National Congress taking place in Shanghai and declared to take the lands back into Chinese hands, eventually emerging from the second world war as the People’s Republic of China in 1949. The event became a milestone in modern Chinese history as it continues to influence virtually every aspect of the country’s growth, where the Chinese greatly thrive to revive the patriotic and selfless qualities of their forefathers and to embrace itself into the modern world.   As the country nears its 70th anniversary in 2019 while the party receives its upcoming Centennial in 2021, the Shanghai Municipal Government called for a wide range of artistic works from new creative artists willing to share their emotional approach to these subjects. Therefore, it was natural that Festival’s attention was drawn to the prolific 25-year-old composer Peng-Peng Gong, who is currently in his fourth season as Resident Composer for the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra after producing some of the largest Chinese symphonic works in Chinese history. “The Revival”, commissioned to open this year’s festival, became the composer’s ninth symphony. As usual in Gong’s works, the choral symphony was composed in the Classical-Romantic tradition with a heavy blend of Chinese folk and traditional material. The composer began work on the music in May 2017 after making numerous scholarly trips to historical monuments dedicated to the events included in the work’s contents. All text were written by renowned writer Mao Shi’an with the exception of “The Youth”, which the text was selected from Li Dazhao, a founder and dominating figure of the CCP in 1916.  The symphony consists of five movements, which include a majestic Overture, a song for Baritone (“The Youth”), a song for tenor (“The Workers”), a song for soprano (“Twilight”) and a grandiose choral finale (“The Dream.”). The overture begins with a children’s choir humming the main theme in a mystic atmosphere, while the orchestra takes over the rest of the overture in a vast emotional range and dynamic contrasts. “The Youth” was set to an essay by Li Dazhao where the author encouraged young people to think as leaders do. The music heavily resembles an early-20th century Shanghai style with its blend of Western romanticism and Chinese southern folk music. “The Workers” was inspired by a philosophical idea known as “The Sacred Worker”, coined by the great educator Cai Yuanpei in 1918. The idea states that the working class should not be limited to hammers and axes but to all men and women who make society a better place with any kind of contribution, whether spiritual or physical. In an energetic marching style, the music borrows sources from worker chants heard and recorded at Shanghai harbors during the time and develops into a vigorous scherzo that brings the work to its first climax. The final two movements, “Twilight” and “The Dream” are both symphonic odes written as patriotic hymns that explores modern nationalism. The composer himself has been a patriotic artist since his early teens when he lived in the U.S. for 12 years in pursuit of his musical education, and he makes a strong point that an artist of any nationality should possess a natural responsibility to one’s own people. The music for these two movements is a culmination of that in which the composer continues to express his will to revive both the great classical and romantic tradition of musical composition and the long-lost selflessness of the individual. The work ends in a grand, uplifting tone as a final prayer for universal harmony.

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