Composer Jeffrey Ching: Amazing masterpieces

Jeffrey Ching, now based in Germany, is doubtless our most avant-garde composer; the distinctive quality of his works has yet to be matched. He has acquired the widest musical and cultural background from two prestigious institutions — Harvard and Cambridge — finishing the three-year philosophy course in the latter in one year!

Drawing from his vast, acquired erudition, Asian orientation, audacity and incredible talent (call it genius) Ching, presumably, is also the country’s most imaginative, creative and innovative composer.

For proof, here is an update on his amazing international masterpieces,

Forthcoming premieres, 2009-2010:

The Orphan, opera in two acts and six scenes — commissioned by the opera house of Theater Erfurt, Germany, and scheduled for six performances there beginning on 29 November 2009. This is apparently the first and so far only foreign opera commission received by a classical composer from the Philippines. The production will be directed by the well-known German opera director Jakob Peter-Messer. The opera is based on a 14th-century Chinese play and features a libretto in seven languages, a large orchestra of both conventional and electronic instruments, and a mixed cast with opera singers, speaker, mimes, chorus, and dancers. The score has been accepted for publication by Verlag Neue Musik/Edition Gravis, a German publishing house specializing in such avant-garde composers as Sidney Corbett, Georg Katzer, and Uros Rojko.

Concerto de camera for guitar, violoncello, and string orchestra — Ching’s latest work is a double concerto written at the request of the Brazilian-German ‘cellist Matias de Oliveira Pinto and the German guitarist Reinbert Evers, which they will premiere in late 2009 and bring to the German ’cello festival Celloherbst in 2010. Pinto is ’cello professor in Berlin and Munster. Evers, for many years dean of the Munster Conservatory, is a vigorous proponent of contemporary music who premiered and edited Hans Werner Henze’s second guitar sonata (Royal Winter Music).

Ching has been asked to composed a new work for the chamber music series of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, scheduled to be premiered there in April 2010.

Previous career highlights, 2006-2008:

Symphony No. 5, “Kunstkammer” for soprano, clarinet, violoncello, concert accordion, strings, harp, and percussion — commissioned by the Deutsches Kammerorchester Berlin. Premiered at the Berlin Philharmonie in March 2006 by soprano Andion Fernandez-Ching, Trio Neuklang, and the Deutsches Kammerorchester Berlin conducted by Michail Jurowski. Matthias Osterwold, artistic director of the Berlin annual contemporary music festival Marzmusik, said: “I heard the Kunstkammer of Jeffrey Ching with great interest. This is indeed an authentically hybrid, unique piece formed of the meshing of different historical and cultural topographic styles. Very special.”

Symphony No. 6, “Souvenirs des Ming” for large orchestra — premiered at the Shanghai International Arts Festival by the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Dmitri Jurowski in November 2006. In the Shanghai Daily, Jurowski said: “I’ve seen the power of mathematics and natural violence in the place… In classical music I’ve seen the power in Beethoven’s music. In modern music I’ve seen the power in Ching’s music,” the Hong Kong Economic Journal wrote: “The work’s orchestration and fugal counterpoint show technical maturity, its tone-colours are rich, the tranquil and nostalgic beginning gradually and very naturally rising to a climax of great emotional turbulence… This impetuous and opportunely contrived ‘chaos’ exactly reflects the sufferings of modern man. When the not very long-lived climax of this chaos recedes, it brings in its wake tones that are peaceful and hazy, an elevated state of mind. This coda, then, is the real climax of the whole work and its point of repose.”

Kunstkabinett for seven players and soprano — premiered in Berlin by soprano Andion Fernandez-Ching and Modern Art Ensemble in September 2007, and repeated at the Konzerthaus Berlin in November 2008. Walter-Wolfgang Sparrer of the International Isang Yun Society, and editor of the journal Komponisten der Gegenwart, wrote: “Jeffrey Ching composed for [the Berlin Sixth Asia-Pacific Weeks] a new piece which uses — and even quotes — in an original manner Western classical music as well as his own inventions. The three-movement Kunstkabinett . . . shows esprit and musical wit . . . Ching starts with the quotation of the first half of [Mozart’s Minuetto KV 576b] on the solo piano and lets a string trio, 1/4-tone higher, continue and subtly deconstruct Mozart’s score. But the second part is introduced by the string trio, which is then confused and gradually destroyed by the piano part. The craftsmanship is so respectful [of the original] that the distinction between ‘text’ and commentary is eventually blurred.”

Notas para una cartografia de Filipinas for piano and lap-gong (gangsa) — premiered in 2008 in Osaka, Japan, by Abelardo Galang II and in Munster, Germany, by Kyoko Okuni Munster Times reviewer wrote: “Jeffrey Ching offered in [this work] a calligraphic tone-painting whose ornamental subtlety was reflected in its sounds. The pianist had to knock on the piano, tie a gong around the waist, master gruelling ostinato figures, complex arpeggios, and quick dynamic changes, traversing the score as if it were a map.”