Things may be different in Asia, though, where the Chinese conductor and composer Tan Dun draws crowds large enough to fill stadiums. So Mr. Tan -- who has lived in New York for the past nine years but retains his Chinese citizenship -- was the obvious choice when the Association for the Reunification of Hong Kong with China wanted a huge work to celebrate...well, you know. The result is the 72-minute "Symphony 1997 (Heaven Earth Mankind)," four minutes of which will be performed for Jiang Zemin, the president of China, on July 1. On July 4, the Hong Kong Philharmonic gives the whole piece its premiere. On July 5, the premiere is repeated in Beijing's Great Hall of the People, and Sony Classics releases the music on a lavishly packaged CD, allowing the entire world (or whatever fraction of it is paying attention) to discover that Mr. Tan has created a sprawling, though in some ways irresistible mess.
"Symphony 1997" is more than symphonic. It's positively epic, and really requires a Hollywood publicist from the 1950's to describe it. See the Imperial Bell Ensemble of China, banging massive "bianzhong" bells unearthed in 1978, after being buried for two thousand years! Adore the innocent voices of the Yip Children's Choir! Thrill to Yo-Yo Ma, the world's best-loved classical musician of Chinese descent, as he adds Chinese and Mongolian riffs to his suave cello sound!
And the piece is a patchwork epic. The opening and closing segment, "Song of Peace," can be played by itself. (That's what the president of China will hear.) The middle section, "Earth," doubles as a stand-alone concerto for cello, bells, and orchestra, titled "Yi3," a successor to Mr. Tan's "Yi0" for orchestra alone, and a reworking of an earlier cello concerto, "Yi1." The start of section three, "Mankind," is adapted from a movie score.
"Song of Peace," with bouncy rhythms escorting an evocative melody sung by the children's choir, could almost be a pop song. "Yi3" shows Mr. Tan as a modernist, playing happily with sonic wisps. The first segment, "Heaven," presents him in more accessible contemporary guise, with echoes of concert-hall favorites like Bartok and Shostakovich, along with punchy brass fanfares right from the soundtrack of some Shakespeare film. In a section called "Opera in Temple Street" he uses Chinese instruments to evoke the sound of Peking opera (something he easily understands, since years ago he worked as performer and arranger for a mainland troupe).

And then there's Mr. Tan's gaudy side. In the next to last portion of the symphony, modestly titled "Lullaby," we hear the Yip Choir, softly singing a tender Chinese melody. Then the rhythm quickens, with an effect like urgent chanting, the same phrase repeated over and over (a tic of Mr. Tan's)...and...wait...we rub our eyes...are we in a movie multiplex? Rising from the orchestra, surging in the stings and brass, is the kind of melody we're used to hearing when the enemy is gone, as the sun rises over a newly resplendent China.
I think I just got carried away, but then so did Mr. Tan. He's magnificently incorrigible, and seems not to hesitate before even the most hackneyed musical idea. He also plays his romantic card early in the work, in the first precincts of "Heaven," when cello musings and children's cries blossom improbably into a tune right out of Puccini's "Turandot," set in a fairytale China that never was or will be. And, fine, I know perfectly well that "Turandot" draws on Chinese folk tunes, and that Mr. Tan, using one of the same melodies Puccini found, has much more right to it. But how can that stop me from groaning "I can't believe he did that!" -- especially since Mr. Tan's orchestration of the tune is even fatter than Puccini's?

I'll give Mr. Tan his compositional due: His symphony is full of moments shaped with a perfect ear, and precious craftsmanship. The "Mankind" section ends with children's voices fading as the cello sings. The cello fades into the depths, and the voices start again as softly as a breeze, joined now by the low orchestral strings, murmuring a counterpoint that develops its own darker edge. Seamlessly, we've begun the "Lullaby," and when the cinematic sunrise blooms, it fades just as quickly away, leaving us with sadness, and three stark timpani notes implacably repeated, first softly, then louder, and finally with crushing force.
In the end, though, we're left with something scattered, a work with no apparent center, which opens its ingratiating arms to every listener, as if to say: "If you don't like what you're hearing, just wait a minute!" Mr. Tan's naiveté knows no bounds, as he proves when he talks about the Yip Choir, saying: "Listen to the innocent voices of these Hong Kong children. They are the future of Hong Kong...when I hear [them] I feel they are chanting the past."
And in one key way, this grandiose blankness is almost scary. We mustn't forget that "Symphony 1997" -- dedicated "to the people who wish to love and be loved," which I guess means to everybody -- is written for a tricky occasion. I won't minimize the thrill felt by Chinese of all political stripes, when they see their country nearly whole again. But the day after reunification, reality sets in, and might not be as happy as the "oneness" Mr. Tan celebrates.
Somewhere in his opus, Mr. Tan evokes Beethoven, with an intentional near-quote from the "Ode to Joy." Beethoven, however, had his own brush with political reality. He dedicated his Eroica symphony to Napoleon, only to rip out the inscription when Napoleon, forsaking all thoughts of democracy, proclaimed himself emperor. Would Mr. Tan do something similar, if Chinese rule in Hong Kong goes bad? For all I know, he might -- but you'd never guess it from this piece.

[The "Yi" titles are even more abstract and mannered than they seem here, because they contain an element that can't be rendered in the HTML code that lies behind all web pages. The numerals -- Yi0, Yi1, and so on -- are supposed to be superscripts.]

Wall Street Journal, June 25, 1997