BOOK RELEASE: Xu Beihong’s Color-And-Ink Paintings —Piano Concerto by Jiang Wenye Discovered After Half a Century

Xu Beihong (1895-1953), Chinese artist and art educator, is widely known as the father of modern Chinese painting. His animal paintings often subtly express deeper meanings through his use of analogy, which achieves the richest expression found in traditional Chinese painting.

Jiang Wenye (1910-1983),Chinese composer and music educator, was among the earliest to write Chinese music for Western orchestra and piano. Xu Beihong’s Color-And-Ink Paintings-Piano Concerto by Jiang Wenye Discovered After Half a Century describes how Jiang Wenye’s hand-written score of the piano concerto portraying Xu Beihong’s color-and-ink paintings was lost and brought to life after its recovery half a century later.

Both Xu Beihong and Jiang Wenye capture in their art the momentary gestures and expressions of the rooster through their sharp observation. As the first composer to bring Xu Beihong’s paintings to the piano and orchestral stage, Jiang Wenye’s work adds richness to the use of analogy in Xu Beihong’s two ink brush rooster paintings. The publication of Xu Beihong’s Color-And-Ink Paintings, including selected color prints of Xu Beihong’s masterpieces and the full score and two-piano score of the third movement, along with a recording performed by Xu Beihong’s pianist daughter, Xu Fangfang, demonstrated the two masters’ historic integration of Chinese and Western art. The concerto’s world premiere on October 22, 2022, in Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, showed the successful artistic integration of Jiang Wenye’s music with Xu Beihong’s paintings to the entire world.

This book can be purchased from Shanghai Music Publishing House via the following link:
https://m.tb.cn/h.5AwfafyXG1JBHJx?tk=09gBWJchxgj

For more information, please visit: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/XcsWggInOAtXz2MUQwFRhA

Xu Fangfang performing the world premiere of Piano Concerto Xu Beihong’s Color-And-Ink Paintings Movement III. Rooster Crowing in the Rain—Recalling Past Valor in Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center on Oct. 22, 2022.

Second half of the concert on Oct. 22, 2022, in Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, dedicated to Xu Beihong: