A CROSS-CULTURAL CELEBRATION:
THE LEGACY OF LEE HSIEN-MING AND ALEXANDER TCHEREPNIN
Supported by the US-China Institute of Bard College and the Louise and Y. T. Lum Foundation
We are delighted to note that our Cross-Cultural celebration of the Legacy of Lee Hsien-Ming and Alexander Tcherepnin on April 12-13 can only be described as an extraordinary success, attaining levels of musical and scholarly distinction well above anything we had initially hoped for.
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| Click here to view the opening concert of the celebration, presented on Friday April 12, 2024 at the Di Menna Center’s Benzaquen Recital Hall in New York City. The program featured music inspired by Lee Hsien Ming and by Alexander Tcherepnin’s enthusiasm for Chinese culture, and also included the prize-winning scores that Suxu Yao, Leyou Wang and Jianjun He submitted to the Third Tcherepnin International Competition for Composers, held in 2024. |
Click here to view the lectures and panel discussions presented on Saturday, April 13 hosted by Tcherepnin Society Performance and Cultural Advisor Jindong Cai. Accounts of Ming Tcherepnin’s life and influence by Meilun Ouyang, Feng Jiahui, and Jennifer Chang, are followed by analyses of Alexander Tcherepnin’s Seven Songs on Chinese Poems, Op. 71 and his Cycle of Seven Chinese Folk Songs, Op. 95 by Mengxi You and Kimly Mengyin Wang. |
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| Click here to view a video performance of Alexander Tcherepnin’s Cycle of Seven Chinese Folk Songs, Op. 95 by Wanchun Liang, Bass-Baritone and Kimly Mengyin Wang, Piano. |
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| Click here to view the prize winning compositions in the 2024 Tcherepnin International Competition. |
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| Nikolai Tcherepnin
(1873-1945) |
Alexander Tcherepnin
(1899-1977) |
Ivan Tcherepnin
(1943-1998) |
THE TCHEREPNIN
SOCIETY is a non-profit
organization dedicated to promoting the music and aesthetic ideals
of the Tcherepnin family's three generations of distinguished composers:
Nikolai Tcherepnin (1873-1945), Alexander Tcherepnin (1899-1977)
and Ivan Tcherepnin (1943-1998). Our particular model for activity
is the multifaceted career that earned Alexander Tcherepnin the
sobriquet "Musical Citizen of the World."
A superlative composer, a lifelong pioneer in new musical techniques,
and a dedicated educator, he was also an enthusiastic internationalist
whose fascination with folk idioms brought him through Eurasian
culture to China and Japan. It was to carry on these shared ideals
that Alexander's widow Hsien Ming Tcherepnin (1911-1991) founded
the Society. Under her leadership, the organization played an important
role in re-normalizing musical contacts between China and the West
after the disruptions of the Cultural Revolution. After her death,
leadership passed to Ivan Tcherepnin, whose global interests as
a composer and professor at Harvard University melded modern technology
with a variety of near- and far-Eastern philosophical and aesthetic
concerns.
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THE BUFFALO BOY
Buffalo
Boy's Flute by Heh Liuting won first prize in the landmark
Chinese composers' competition sponsored by Alexander Tcherepnin
in Shanghai in 1934. Tcherepnin soon chose a buffalo boy logo
for the publishing firm he founded in Tokyo to issue Chinese
and Japanese concert works, offering Mr. Heh's score as No. 1
in his catalogue.
To Ivan Tcherepnin, who made
the buffalo boy his own a generation later, this filial icon
represented the youthful joy that accompanies and blesses
the creative act. |
Today the Tcherepnin Society continues
to furnish financial and artistic support for concerts, new recordings
and the reissue of important older recordings of music by the Tcherepnins,
particularly of scores that suffer unjust neglect. We provide financing
for scholarly books and articles that contribute to increased understanding
of the Tcherepnins' artistry. We subsidize international concertizing
by musicians who aim at Alexander and Ivan Tcherepnin's multicultural
reach, and also underwrite educational travel and study programs
that enable young musicians of all nations to immerse themselves
in musical traditions radically different from those in their homelands.
Alexander Tcherepnin's view of music as
a moral force that breaks down artificial barriers between peoples
has a special relevance in our own troubled times. We invite you
to help us in our efforts to keep these ideals alive and flourishing.
Contributions
to The Tcherepnin Society, a 501 (c) (3) organization, are tax deductible.
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"A great family! Mastery and distinction
are the qualities of them all." --Virgil
Thomson |
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