NO MORE EAST OR WEST

By TERRY TEACHOUT

It starts with the sound of ancient bells. Not just any ancient bells, but the deep-throated, time-tinted clang and roar of a bianzhong, a fully intact set of 65 ceremonial bronze chimes entombed in China's Hubei province in 433 B.C. and dug up by amazed archaeologists 2,400 years later. Then the Hong Kong Philharmonic steals in with a simple yet radiant tune in D major--the key of Beethoven's Ode to Joy--and a children's choir begins to sing, accompanied by the soft throb of Chinese drums pounding out an African-flavored beat.

Is it a symphony? Is it world music? Call Tan Dun's Symphony 1997 (Heaven Earth Mankind) whatever you like, but be prepared to reckon with it. Composed to commemorate the reunification of Hong Kong with China, this seductively savory multicultural stew is shaping up as the classical-music event of the summer. The 72-minute work was telecast worldwide July 1 from the handover ceremonies in Hong Kong, and the first recording, conducted by Tan and featuring Yo-Yo Ma as cello soloist, was rushed into print by Sony the following week, debuting in the No. 5 slot on the Billboard classical chart.

Why did Symphony 1997 take off so quickly? One reason is that it is both frankly romantic and immediately accessible--Beethoven's Ninth boldly recast for postmoderns, right down to the climactic anthem in which the children's choir sings ecstatically of the prospect of world peace. The work's user-friendly tone, Tan says, is no accident: "If you ask young people of today to listen to a 20-minute-long symphonic movement, nobody really has the patience to listen--not even me! This is why the symphony is in 13 short movements. It's like paragraphs: each section can be shorter, but you still maintain the continuity."

Born in 1957 in China's Hunan province, Tan began life as an unlikely candidate for concert-hall stardom. He spent the hellish years of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution planting rice and listening not to symphonies and concertos but to the music of village rituals. "It's more like a language than music," he recalls. "Soundwise, it's like the texture of wind." At 19, while playing violin in a Beijing opera company, he heard his first piece of Western classical music, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, which opened up a whole new world of sonic possibilities. He went to New York City to study composition in 1986, and has lived there ever since. "New York is the best place for me," he explains. "It's everybody from everywhere, and something new comes out of it, something blended."

Initially influenced by the jarring acerbities of the postwar avant-garde, Tan has since joined the new wave of classical composers who, following such successful older figures as John Corigliano and Henryk Gorecki, seek to speak to the largest possible audience without compromising their musical seriousness. "In the middle of the 20th century," he says, "composers were trying to be as isolated as possible--extremely, even selfishly isolated. I can't see why we should keep on doing that."

Tan's first broad-based success came with his Ghost Opera, written for the Kronos Quartet in 1994 (and newly available on a Nonesuch CD), in which a Bach prelude, a Chinese folk song, the chanting of monks and the words of Shakespeare are woven into a haunting musical tapestry. Since then Tan has completed his first Hollywood assignment (a hard-edged, jazz-tinged score for Denzel Washington's next movie, Fallen, due later this year) and signed an exclusive recording contract with Sony Classical. Slated for release in October is Marco Polo: An Opera Within an Opera, a work whose U.S. premiere, to be given the following month by the New York City Opera, is already causing a stir in the music business. Paul Kellogg, City Opera's general and artistic director, describes Marco Polo as "a visionary experience--and I think some people would call it a mystical experience."

All things considered, Tan Dun doesn't have much to complain about these days. The only thing that seems to exasperate him is when pigeonhole-happy journalists, mistaking him for yet another purveyor of souvenir-shop local color, claim that his music "brings East and West together." Nothing doing, Tan replies. "No East anymore, no West anymore. My purpose is to be flexible and freely flying around among all kinds of experience. Not to be driven by the wave of culture--fashion, trends, isms, schools--but to create my own unity."